


A Balcony in Urithiru

by she_is_rysn



Category: Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Book 03: Oathbringer Spoilers, F/F, F/M, M/M, significantly gayer than canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:20:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 61
Words: 52,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23041639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/she_is_rysn/pseuds/she_is_rysn
Summary: Shallan and Kaladin discover a new property of Stormlight, also that they love each other.All parts take place inside Part 2 of Oathbringer, concurrent with events in the book.This was originally published in pieces under a series of the same name - if you've read that, you've read this, basically!
Relationships: Kaladin & Adolin Kholin, Kaladin & Dalinar Kholin, Shallan Davar & Jasnah Kholin, Shallan Davar/Adolin Kholin, Shallan Davar/Kaladin, Shallan/Chouta
Comments: 14
Kudos: 26





	1. All a Kind of Lashing

**Author's Note:**

> Heya! To commemorate two years of writing the same dang fic, I decided to get all the chapters in one place and give them a little edit. 
> 
> If you've already read the originally published chapters, you won't really be missing anything new except some cleaned-up formatting and some streamlined story choices. But if you haven't encountered the series yet and would like to, this is definitely the place to start.
> 
> Either way, this work will be the home for all new chapters, and I appreciate you so much for coming on the journey with these lovesick Radiants.

Shallan | Kaladin

Shallan floated, suspended in the air.

Below her, Kaladin stood, face upturned below her dangling toes.

"Brightness!" he called, reaching up and taking hold of her left boot, "I think this technically counts as mine!"

"From the odor, it probably is!" Shallan called back, looking bashfully at the sky. From where Kaladin was standing, she knew he could see right under her havah, and while she wasn't sure if the Stormlight trailing off her skin gave him a better look, she guessed that it did. For a brief moment, she considered Lightweaving herself some pants for modesty, but honestly why would she? What was at all modest about a secret meeting with not-her-fiance in the middle of the night?

Pattern hummed from the bodice of her havah. He seemed puzzled.

“Shallan,” he wondered, “I think you and the captain are meeting here so you can put your bodies close together. Yet he has put you very high above him, instead of closer, and this seems acceptable to you both. Why?”

Kaladin gently unlaced her boot, pulling it from her foot and waving it aloft. "Now we're even!" Where was the stormcloud that always followed this man around? Where were the begrudging grunts of acknowledgment, the clumsy and embarrassed attempts at a pun? It seemed almost like he was trying an impression of Adolin, with these easy smiles and playful jokes. Adolin. Adolin. Adolin could never know about this. Could he?

Shallan became flustered, her heart racing. She glanced down to notice anticipationspren gathering around Kaladin, crimson streamers rising from the ground. Shallan wondered if she could even attract those spren from way up here, or if possibly some of the spren appearing had actually been drawn by her, unable to float up to where she was. It could be an interesting study, determining whether ground-based emotionspren could be attracted mid-air. Maybe the bridgemen would consent to--

“Shallan?” Pattern asked again. “Did you note my inquiry?”

Startled, Shallan shook her head abruptly. Was she really planning a research project while floating in mid-air during a midnight tryst with a Knight Radiant? Really?

She felt Kaladin untying her other boot, sliding it gently off her foot and dropping it to the ground. Ever so slowly, he began to rise up in the air to meet her. Shallan knew it was all a kind of Lashing, but it seemed to possess endless permutations that came as easily to him as breathing. As he rose, his fingers trailed along the seams of her havah.

“Ah, he is closing the distance between you,” Pattern observed, sounding satisfied. “This must be a human ritual. Fascinating.”

As Shallan watched Kaladin creep up in the air towards her, she had a thought.

******

Kaladin looked up at the two pale legs dangling above him. It was hard to believe that, after just a few days back in Urithiru, he had ended up in this secluded spot, lit by the glow of Shallan Davar. Barely a day after he returned she had slipped him a map, torn from her sketchpad. It depicted one of the many sections of Urithiru not yet in use, leading a ways off Sebarial’s holdings where Shallan lived. Just as she’d done in the Shattered Plains, the twists and turns were depicted in perfect proportion, identifying patterns in the strata along the way. At the balcony where they were to meet, she’d drawn a picture of Nomon, which now shone overhead.

Syl seemed satisfied, obviously giving herself a great deal of credit for the situation he found himself in now.

“You made her look like me,” she said, gesturing with her chin towards the blue-white aura of Shallan’s body hovering a foot above his head. “I’m choosing not to pursue that line of thought.”

Kaladin couldn't say why he had Lashed Shallan to the middle of the air - maybe to give himself a minute to think, maybe he hoped it would give her a thrill to float weightlessly, maybe he craved the sight of her glowing in the clear, cold night. But the minute he’d stepped onto the balcony and seen her waiting there, before she could say anything clever and before he could say anything stupid, he'd sent her up, Syl zipping around her skirts like a windspren.

He wondered if he should have asked first if that was something she'd want to do, but the minute Shallan's feet left the ground she let out a yelp, then a whoop, then almost a cackle of joy as the Lashing carried her higher and higher, finally subsiding as he reached up and touched her heel, adding a tiny Lashing down to keep her suspended. Kaladin half expected himself to judge that joy, but he felt nothing but affection, a deep and warm sensation that left him feeling hungry and thirsty and awake. He remembered this feeling but couldn't place it. It was different than Stormlight, and older.

Kaladin let her second shoe fall to the ground, grateful for the stupid joke about boots that would surely follow them to their graves, then Lashed himself ever so slightly upward. Stormlight and blood surging for equal purchase in his veins, he watched her body pass like floors on Urithiru’s lift - ankles, skirts, bodice, collarbone...

Rock's face.


	2. Apology With Boots

Shallan | Kaladin

Kaladin shouted in surprise, then glared at Shallan through the Lightweaving she'd done of the Horneater cook's face. He looked more like himself now, all brooding and accusatory. Despite his surprise, he barely wobbled midair, steady as if he was standing on the ground.

"I DEMANDING APOLOGY" Shallan tried in the terrible Horneater accent she'd put on the day they met. "YOU WILL APOLOGY WITH BOOTS."

"Oh, come on!" Kaladin shouted, seeming genuinely offended. Shallan struggled to get control of her laughter, her knees curling weightlessly into her chest in fits of guffaws until she tucked into a roll, spinning on some imaginary axis at her navel. Without any ground to fall on, she realized with delight that she'd just keep spinning until she was right side up again.

Kaladin’s reaction had been funny, but she was laughing too hard, and though the bridgeman was fun - and far too easy - to tease, a part of Shallan recognized that she was stalling. Stalling what though? Pattern hummed on her skirts, sensing the lie. Soon, she realized, she would have to drop the Lightweaving and the laughter and look into the storming man's eyes. And then the trouble would really start.

******

Kaladin let out a sigh of frustration as Shallan, doubled over by the borderline-offensive Horneater accent that was clearly meant to be funny, tumbled into a flip. Beside him, Syl was gasping for breath too, doing her best impression of someone who needed to breathe.

“You should’ve seen your face!” Syl wheezed, somehow managing to squeeze tears from her eyes. Shallan’s spren even seemed to do its version of laughter, a disconcerting buzz.

“Is this all a joke?” He demanded of any of them. He was starting to wonder whether this really _was_ some sort of trick, but it couldn’t be. His own spren wouldn’t plot against him - maybe couldn’t - and though he knew Shallan loved to joke at his expense, a prank like this would be cruel, even by her standards. This must be something else. But why did it always seem like there was a joke he wasn’t in on? Quickly, he Lashed himself backwards in order to dodge her feet as they drifted by.

By the time Shallan flipped back around to face him, she’d dismissed the Lightweaving and he could see her face. Her cheeks were wet with tears from laughter and her face flushed red from being upside down. Storming woman.

“That was fun!” Shallan said, taking a moment to wipe away the tears. She seemed to be avoiding his gaze for some reason. “We should really look into gymnastic applications for these Lashings, could be great exercise.”

“Sure, we’ll squeeze in tumbling after spear practice,” Kaladin deadpanned. What were they even talking about? She had invited him out in the middle of the night to make jokes? What was happening? And what did he want to happen that wasn’t?

“Kiss her,” urged Syl. Kaladin glanced toward where she hovered, just above Shallan’s shoulder.

“Is your spren talking to you too?” asked Shallan, turning to where he was looking, though she knew she wouldn’t see Syl floating there.

Kaladin nodded. “What’s yours say?”

******

Kaladin Stormblessed had his arms crossed, black hair tumbling over the brands on his forehead, jaw set petulantly. Apparently he hadn’t enjoyed the illusion as much as Shallan herself had, though it seemed like maybe his spren found it funny.

“Pattern thinks we’re doing some kind of ritual," Shallan admitted. "He finds it fascinating. You?”

Kaladin inclined his head, as if searching in the stars for the right response. Then, he looked back at her, right into her eyes.

Stormsstormsstormsstormsstorms

Shallan froze. Desperately, she emptied her pouch of all its Stormlight to ease the panic or whatever it was she was feeling, which was as if a giant hand was squeezing on her windpipe and heart simultaneously. The sensation didn’t let up, but the Stormlight allowed her to hold her breath without trouble.

She didn’t know what she expected from this meeting, was frankly surprised they had both followed through. Kaladin’s spren seemed to be invested in them for some reason, and Pattern enjoyed the deception inherent in their interactions, so in a way their flirtation seemed to have become a group activity. But was that what this was? Were they flirting? Flirting seemed...less than whatever this was. Flirting didn’t seem like it could cause this reaction in her.

While Kaladin had been away, Shallan had realized she missed him. When he returned, she felt relief. Fearing their relationship would never be more than furtive glances at meetings or theatrical insults hurled back & forth, the map was born. And he’d come. He was here. He was looking at her. And she couldn’t breathe.

Kaladin’s brow began to furrow in concern. “Shallan? Are you feeling all right? Should I bring us back down?” He reached for her shoulders and held them firmly, trying to get her to meet his gaze, so she squeezed her eyes shut. Still holding her breath through the Stormlight, Shallan shook her head, trying frantically to think what Veil would do. Then, thankfully, Veil appeared.

******

Kaladin blinked. A second ago, Shallan had seemed to have some sort of panic attack. Now, she met him with a level gaze, and her features seemed...sharper? Had her eyes turned brown? Maybe the light was playing tricks on him.

"Took you long enough," she seemed to mutter to herself. She smiled broadly at Kaladin, resting her hands lightly on his shoulders. "You sure know how to sweep a girl off her feet."

"Shallan?" Kaladin asked carefully. The change had been too abrupt, her cheeks now dry and even-toned. This wasn't just Shallan, she was doing something extra. And she was laughing again.

"What's she doing?" asked Syl. She walked over to Shallan's face, inspecting it. "Is there something wrong with her face? Maybe you should kiss it and make it better, Kaladin."

So he did.


	3. You Blew Into My Mouth

Shallan | Kaladin

Veil sucked Stormlight from Kaladin. She hadn't meant to, but once their lips touched, she instinctively drew it in, feeling greedy and underfed. Kaladin pulled back sharply, looking both surprised and concerned, but maybe that was just his face. Storming man always had something weighing on him. He pressed his lips to hers again, and this time, Veil felt him recover all the Stormlight she'd just inadvertently stolen, kissing her with a tenderness she honestly hadn't expected. He started to take more of her Stormlight, then more, then more, until even the tiny Lightweaving she'd used on her face started to dissipate, along with Veil herself.

Curiously, the sensation didn't concern Shallan in the least. It actually felt...wonderful. Veil, usually reluctant to cede control, retreated without a complaint. None of this seemed right. Being without Stormlight usually felt like a lesser existence. Veil simply backing off was unheard of. What was happening? And more, why didn't she care? Pattern hummed concern on the back of her havah, dodging the hand Kaladin had just placed there.

"Mmmmm...you are like gemstones to each other," he observed. "Shallan! You have gone dun."

"Mhmm," acknowledged Shallan, running the fingers of her freehand through the hair curling at the nape of Kaladin's neck. For all her insults about his stench, Kaladin didn't actually smell bad. Adolin was always clean. Even at sword practice he somehow still seemed clean, his sweat mingling with cologne. The man she was kissing now tasted sharp like a sea voyage and smelled like the Shattered Plains after a highstorm. His hair was coarse and tangled, and she loved catching her fingers in its snarls.

Suppressing an urge to steal back her own Stormlight, Shallan reflexively bit Kaladin's lip. Then, knowing he could heal it immediately, she bit harder.

******

Kaladin's eyes flew open at the unexpected pain. Had Shallan just...bitten him? Twice? And then gone back to kissing him as if nothing had happened? He would never know what went on in that mind. Stormlight healed the cut instantly, maybe even Shallan's own Stormlight, and before long he found himself with eyes shut again, inhaling the fragrance of her impossibly soft skin. How were they able to pass it back and forth like this? Even more strange, he'd expected her to fight back once he started to drain her Stormlight, but she hadn't. Testing, Kaladin slowly pulled every last bit of Stormlight from Shallan, until even the Lightweaving she'd done was gone and he could see her flushed and freckled cheeks as before.

As he circled both arms around her, her fingers caressing his hair, he was suddenly struck by the strangeness of the picture. Here they were in the dead of night, a darkeyed soldier eight feet off the ground with a Veden lighteyes in his arms, a Veden lighteyes who could make worlds out of thin air, who was trusting in only his Stormlight to keep her aloft. And who was kissing him back. Kaladin was pretty sure he couldn't stand Shallan half the time, maybe more, and yet it was clear that something was happening between them, and they were both determined to find out what.

Though Kaladin knew he could catch her if needed, it felt strange to know that Shallan was unprotected against a fall. So he tried to give back some Stormlight, unintentionally Lashing his hand to the small of her back. He quickly released the Lashing, unsure of whether she had noticed, and tried again, this time accidentally blowing air into her mouth, which she definitely did notice. Why was this so hard?

******

Shallan got a mouthful of Kaladin's breath. He seemed to be trying to do something, having stuck his hand to the back of her havah and now exhaling a little too energetically into her mouth. She pulled back, thankful for a reason to laugh again.

"You blew into my mouth," she said.

Kaladin Stormblessed, Knight Radiant, temper the size of a highstorm and eyes the color of Shadesmar, looked sheepish.

"Yeah," he admitted. "I did."


	4. You Love Me

Shallan | Kaladin

Storms, those eyes. What was it about them? Shallan knew she wasn't afraid of the bridgeman - in fact, she couldn't remember ever feeling this safe - but the thought of looking into Kaladin’s eyes was...scary. Why? She pushed against an impulse to let Veil take over again, reasoning to herself that a scholarly approach might work: identify the problem, look for causes, observe. Radiant perked up, sensing that she might be useful, but Shallan fought her back. She was the scholar, she could do it. Near tears for some reason, tamping down a desperate desire for someone else to handle it, she lifted her eyes until they locked with Kaladin’s.

******

"I was trying to give your Stormlight back," Kaladin explained. Shallan seemed to be struggling, focusing hard on something. On him?

"Turns out giving it back isn't as easy as taking it."

"So it would seem." Storms, was she crying? Abruptly, Shallan took Kaladin’s face in both her hands, peering into his eyes. Through her safehand sleeve, he felt her slender fingers mirroring the cool, dry touch of her freehand on his other cheek. Kaladin had plenty of Stormlight to keep them aloft, yet found himself holding tight to her, as if she might tumble down at any moment. Pressed up to her, he noticed she was trembling.

"Shallan, please take some light back," Kaladin almost begged, softly kissing her lips. She recovered a little, no more than a sip, and he felt the trembling subside.

"Should we go back down now?" he whispered, surprised at how timid he all of a sudden felt. "It seems like something might be wrong."

Shallan’s gaze was becoming disconcerting. "No, I don't think anything's wrong," she replied.

******

Kaladin Stormblessed was looking at her, and she, Shallan, only Shallan, was looking back. Staring intently, she observed the man holding her safely in the sky.

Shallan watched the emotions crossing Kaladin’s face: confusion at her admittedly strange behavior, tenderness as he tried to puzzle out what was wrong, concern at her tears. His arms, firm around her waist, clung to her as if he had accidentally Lashed them there again.

Storms, he was in love with her. And she was freaking him out.

******

“You love me,” Shallan finally said. She was using the Stormlight she’d recovered to hold her breath, letting a faint puff escape with her remark.

Somewhere close by, Kaladin heard Syl squeal with delight.

Before Kaladin could react, mist started to form around them. Shallan hastily pulled Kaladin’s face towards her and sucked Stormlight from his lips with surprising speed. The warmth of her lips and the pounding of her heart against his chest caused him to lose himself for a moment, but he pulled away just before his Stormlight became dangerously low. When he opened his eyes, Kaladin was stunned to see them surrounded by a place he knew very well. Shallan looked around them, looking just as surprised as he felt.

“Do you know where this is?” she asked.

“My home,” Kaladin whispered.

******

They began to float down to the ground, the Lightweaving descending along with them. In Shallan’s excitement, she realized she may have drained too much Stormlight for Kaladin to maintain their altitude.

Upon landing, Shallan found herself surrounded by a perfect replica of an Alethi hillside, the details of which she had somehow received from Kaladin as she’d done with Dalinar in the past. It still wasn’t clear why this could happen - she’d merely sensed something, instinctively reaching for Kaladin to feed the impulse with his - their - Stormlight.

From the look of it, Kaladin’s memory was of the Weeping, phantom raindrops falling all around them, rockbuds full to bursting on the ground. They stood twenty paces from a house much like the darkeyed cottages she’d seen at home, windows shut to the rain.

Kaladin broke from her, the landscape dissipating and re-forming around his ankles as he explored its contents. Shallan suddenly became aware of her bare feet, and distracted herself by squinting through the Lightweaving to search out where Kaladin had dropped her boots. How long ago had that been? It felt like a million years. She felt like an intruder, guilty for creating such an intimate memory, even if it was by accident.

“How...did you do this?” Kaladin whispered, almost to himself. Reaching the door of the cottage, he waved his hand through, seeming to hope that it might become solid with his touch. When Stormlight slipped through his fingers, he sank to his knees.

******

Syl drifted beside Kaladin, her eyes wide.

"I...remember this, Kaladin," she murmured. "It feels like another lifetime, but I remember this place...when it was like this."

The Lightweaving took up no more space than the balcony where they stood, but Kaladin could almost see the road leading down to the village, the dreary sky that had always seemed to stretch on forever. Not so long ago, he'd been back at Hearthstone, seen his family again, held his new baby brother in his arms. He’d been here.

But the image of the place he now saw was before oaths, before Voidbringers, before war. The very stone seemed unaware of what was to come. Kaladin could barely remember a time when he hadn't been bracing for a fight, or fighting one, but here it was, feeling like someone else’s memory.

The splash of footfalls echoed behind him. Kaladin spun around to see Tien.


	5. The Weeping Itself

Shallan watched as a small boy entered the illusion of Kaladin’s home, bending down every few steps to inspect a pebble from the ground. Dressed in a hooded tunic and trousers, he exhibited the deep focus only a child can maintain on an arbitrary task. It turned out the boy's mission at the moment was searching for just the right rocks. Shallan studied the child's slight frame, noticing something familiar about the slope of his nose as the rain dripped off it, the way his mouth set when he concentrated.

She looked to Kaladin, who knelt on the ground and gaped at the illusion. Could this be him as a boy? Shallan was able to channel the Stormfather's perspective through Dalinar - had Kaladin's spren somehow provided the imagery for what they now saw?

Shallan turned again to the boy. There was something...different about him. His eyes were wide and set farther apart, his hands dexterous with slender fingers. He seemed...too innocent, too full of wonder. Shallan knew well that experiences changed a person, but she still had trouble believing brooding, serious Kaladin had ever been the boy whose glowing figure now stumbled among the rockbuds. A brother maybe?

"Shallan," sounding hoarse, Kaladin broke the silence. "Make it stop, please."

******

Kaladin sagged, exhaustionspren rippling around him as the illusion retreated towards Shallan, dissipating almost as quickly as it had appeared. Devoid of Stormlight to bolster him, the sight of Tien - so small, so unaware of what would come - crushed him like a chasmfiend. He understood none of it had been real, and yet he had wanted to race over to the boy, take him in his arms and beg for his forgiveness. The realization that his brother would dissolve in the embrace he longed to give was almost more than Kaladin could handle. Young or not, naive or not, he had failed Tien in the most crucial, permanent way. There would be no correcting that loss.

Why had Shallan taken him back there? And how?

Shallan knelt down in front of him. He hadn't noticed her approach. She lifted his chin and kissed him softly, then settled back on her heels when he didn’t respond. Kaladin knew she was only offering him Stormlight, but couldn't bring himself to take it. Syl hovered by his shoulder, concerned.

"I'm sorry," Shallan whispered. "I don't know how it happened."

******

Kaladin looked smaller, as if the Weeping of the illusion had actually soaked him through. She felt she ought to take him in her arms, hold him protectively the way he'd held her tight, but she could only think of kneeling beside her father, singing to him softly as she choked the life from him. Was she even capable of caring for anyone without hurting them? Wasn't she ultimately responsible for showing Kaladin the memory that was hurting him so terribly? Why had they gone there at all?

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I don't know how it happened."

Kaladin looked at her, eyes filled with...disappointment? Regret? The Weeping itself? Without a word, he rested his forehead against hers and let out a deep, ragged sigh.

******

Shallan was stronger than Kaladin had expected. With each exhale, he leaned harder and harder on her where their foreheads touched, feeling impossibly heavy. She didn't try to kiss him again or hold him, just pushed back gently against his weight, keeping him upright, the Stormlight that had just been his brother streaming off her skin.

It felt good to lean on someone who could hold him up.


	6. Be Your Mirror

Shallan | Kaladin

Shallan didn’t know how much time had passed before she noticed her Stormlight was running low. In some kind of strange communion, they’d knelt with their heads pressed together, holding one another up. The sun was rising.

“Kaladin,” she whispered. “We should probably go.” She placed her hands on the ground to take back her weight.

In response, he did the same. They broke from one another in silence.

Studying her face, Kaladin reached out and brushed his fingers across her forehead.

"It says the same thing backwards, right?" he asked.

"Basically," she replied. “Well, it says something different, but it means the same thing.”

"Nahn Sas," he outlined with a finger, then, reversing the outline, he murmured, "Sas Nahn.” Kaladin grimaced, tracing the shash glyph below the glyph pair without reading it aloud.

"I wouldn't recommend getting branded, Brightness, it doesn't suit you."

"But what if I'm dangerous?" Shallan challenged, smiling mischievously. Kelek's breath, could she ever let a moment pass without mutating it into a joke?

Kaladin laughed bitterly. "You're not dangerous."

"Maybe," Shallan ventured, "I am. Lots of other dangerous people go about undetected, why not me?" She reached up and gently touched his brow. "All this means is someone with power was afraid of you."

******

Kaladin noticed Shallan's lips, pursed in concentration as her freehand traced the glyphs on his forehead. He had half-expected to flinch, or for the sensation of being branded to come flooding back, but all he felt was the numbness of the scars that were left behind, and the gentle brush of Shallan's fingertips. He listened to the whispered exhale of her breath as she studied him, and thought of the softness of her lips when he had kissed them. How long ago had that been? Just a few hours, he knew, but it felt like an age.

Kaladin looked up at the ghostly reflection of his brands, pressed into Shallan's forehead by his own. The red impressions overwhelmed her face, freckles adding further clutter across her cheeks and nose. Her blue eyes, bleary from lack of sleep, still glowed calm and level amid the din. "I've never seen these glyphs on someone else, at least not in a long time. It's like you're wearing my face," he observed, then quickly he stammered, "Don’t, DON’T. Don't do it. Please." The memory of Rock’s head atop her shoulders came rushing back to him - he wasn’t interested in seeing her impression of him, especially not right now.

Shallan started, then chuckled. "Captain Kaladin, I promise you I would never risk being your mirror. You very likely shatter them all with the daggers that are always shooting from your eyes, and I'm terrible at dodging. Besides, I-I...I'm sorry," she abruptly muttered, "I'm sorry."

Shallan seemed pained, silently chastising herself for the retort, but she was only being herself. A skyeel never scolded itself for flying, why should Shallan blame herself for another half-baked remark? Kaladin was growing accustomed to the barbs she seemed to always have ready. They were rarely clever or funny, but who would she be without them? Quieter, probably. That might be all right. Either way, he found he didn't mind.

******

Shallan cursed silently, blood rushing to her cheeks. In the time since they'd met on this deserted balcony, she'd felt a small door open inside her. It led to a place she tried to keep hidden always, slamming the door shut with a glib comment or joke every time she sensed the hinges opening. But over the past few hours she'd felt a timid and warm part of herself nudging that door, drawn to a similar warmth inside Kaladin. All night, as they knelt together, the warmth crept farther and farther from its confines, like frillblooms peeping out after a storm. It was so hard to let it venture forth, vulnerable as a cremling without a carapace, but something told her it would be all right, she would be safe. If the warmth could reach Kaladin, he would keep it safe.

She shouldn't have been surprised when finally her frantic impulses won out, and she'd made some dumb comment. Again. Instantly the warmth retreated back to its prison, just in time for her to lock it away. Storms, she felt like crying. Kaladin was going to think it was all a game to her. How could she explain?

"It's all right," Kaladin said lightly, resting his forehead on hers once more, "no further apologies are necessary." With a brief kiss he took some Stormlight from her and rose to standing, offering her a hand up. He strode over to where Shallan's boots lay, gathering them under his arm. "These will do for a while."

Then, he Lashed himself into the air.

******

Shallan looked bewildered as she shrank from Kaladin’s view. Syl zipped around him as he rose, then kept pace with his shoulder in the form of a young woman.

"Kaladin," she said, "I don't understand what's going on with you and Shallan."

"Me either," Kaladin confessed, disoriented by his own swagger. Had he really just taken her boots and abandoned her down there? Was he being...playful? Had he ever in his life? He didn't mean any more harm than Shallan meant all the rude things she said to him, and for the first time he paused to consider that all her teasing may have been a warped display of affection.

"She said you love her," Syl said.

"I remember."

"Well, do you?" she prodded, hovering in front of his nose as he ducked into a window a few levels up.

Kaladin pondered the question. He didn't feel defensive or embarrassed, as he usually did when Syl brought up Shallan, nor was he troubled by her relationship - present and future - with Adolin. All of a sudden, the problems that had always bothered him about getting closer to Shallan seemed small, nearly invisible next to the potential of knowing the woman he'd left barefoot on a balcony, who'd shown him Tien and hadn't asked him to explain. A woman who, for a little longer at least, would have the mirror image of his brands on her forehead.

"I do," he finally responded. "But she loves me too."

******

“Shallan,” buzzed Pattern, “Do you require comforting? There there. There there. Does it work?”

Shallan used the last of her Stormlight to Lightweave the disguise of a darkeyed workman, complete with shoes. She felt dazed, hungover, but didn’t have enough Stormlight to ease the feeling and maintain her illusion. The stone floors of Urithiru were cold and rough on her bare feet as she made her way back to her rooms, Pattern running along the walls beside her and humming to fill the silence. When Shallan finally arrived back, she found the map she had given Kaladin, re-folded carefully and placed on her desk. The balcony was circled, alongside a crude scrawl of what she finally determined was a boot. Tonight, then. She crawled into bed. Inside her chest, she felt something glowing warm.


	7. 20 Days

Kaladin | Shallan

Kaladin took Bridge Four to the Shattered Plains. It was a calculated attempt to build confidence and solidarity amongst the new recruits, but it also ensured he wouldn’t run into Adolin on the practice grounds, or anywhere, hopefully. Though he remained certain there was a future where he and the prince wouldn’t descend to some lighteyes nonsense like dueling over Shallan, he was equally sure they needed time to find the path to that future. If Kaladin saw the princeling today, it wouldn’t be good.

Bridge Four was a marvel. Men who had once cheered him as he discovered his powers were now glowing with Stormlight, encouraging new recruits and one another. Watching them grab hold of their own Stormlight today filled Kaladin with pride. His men - and women now - were going to be all right. With time and training, they would be prepared. He could protect them until then.

Elhokar’s arrival on the Plains came as a surprise, along with his plan to take back Kholinar. Kaladin respected the king’s desire to rescue his family, but the timing was hard. 20 days to train up a team - too short, but enough. 20 more nights with Shallan to figure out what they'd gotten themselves into - plenty of time, right? Sneaking out to a deserted balcony every night was never going to be a long-term solution, and before he left on this mission they should know where they stood. Tonight, they would make a plan. Hopefully some other things too, but definitely a plan. 

Kaladin caught a glimpse of Renarin by the cookfire, carefully shaping dough. He knew the young prince loved his brother fiercely. Would Kaladin be betraying his own soldier if they continued this affair? Storms, affair was a terrible word. It sounded like a word Ialai Sadeas would say.

His thoughts were interrupted by shouts, Voidbringers, and Rock’s family.

******

Kaladin was already there when Shallan arrived on the balcony, seated on the ledge with legs dangling over the side, facing out into the night. On the floor of the balcony was a heap of infused gems of all kinds, giving off a steady, multichromatic glow. Shallan noted with pleasure how the colors would sometimes cancel each other, emeralds, sapphires and rubies combining to emit a pure white light in places.

He’d brought Stormlight to practice with, then.

She’d tried to avoid him, and Adolin, and Jasnah too for that matter, for most of the day, busying herself with Palona to go over the logistics for Sebarial’s plans to expand in Urithiru. The highprince’s mistress seemed suspicious at Shallan’s as-yet-undeclared enthusiasm for the project, but aside from a raised eyebrow she didn’t ask any questions and seemed appreciative of the help. It wasn't very interesting work — mostly sorting through ledgers and identifying large-scale tasks that would need special attention — but it had allowed her time to think without any distractions.

Here is what Shallan concluded.

First, she was going to have to report their new found...ability. This was an entirely new property of a substance of which they already knew very little, and it would be irresponsible of her as a scholar not to report it. Even more irresponsible than kissing a man she wasn’t betrothed to in the middle of the night. Actually, maybe the same amount of irresponsible. Actually, maybe just shy of that.

Second, she was going to have to tell Adolin. She wasn’t sure what was between her and Kaladin, but it was different from her connection to Adolin, as different as the men themselves. With a nudge from Radiant, she attempted a list of pros and cons of one or the other, but the moment she tried to put a value on either relationship, it felt wrong, like writing with her safehand. It was going to be difficult to explain all of that to her betrothed, but it would be cruel to keep it a secret.

Storms, this was going to be hard.

Shallan took a deep breath and crossed the balcony, approaching Kaladin and placing a hand on his shoulder. He turned toward her with a thoughtful not-quite-smile.

“I forgot to bring your boots.”


	8. A Million More Minutes

Kaladin | Shallan

Kaladin arrived early, before Salas had even set. Rock and his family were settled in Bridge Four’s barracks, his wife and children assimilated quicker than the evening’s stew had been devoured. It wasn’t at all strange to see Rock as a family man. In a way, he’d become the adoptive father to the entire bridge crew, nourishing them in body and spirit. Rock knew how to listen, when to talk, who was ready to joke and who wasn’t, and of course, how to make soulcast rations taste like food. Surrounded by his family, the man simply seemed more...himself. Rock’s wife, fierce, surefooted and brave, seemed to know beyond all doubt that they would reunite. And they had reunited. She had made sure.

It made him think of his mother and father, who supported one another unwaveringly. After so much tragedy, they had held strong, even continued to grow their family. Was that love? That unquestioning confidence in someone?

He saw that strength, that impenetrable faith. But he didn’t recognize it. He didn’t feel it. The thought of Shallan filled him with longing, warmth, affection. But not assurances. When he was with her, he felt excited, more alive, but not more himself. Did it matter? If he couldn’t imagine building a home with Shallan, did it mean they couldn’t build anything?

In the darkness between the two moons, Kaladin considered this, wondering if he could put it into words. Then, as Nomon rose, he felt a hand on his shoulder.

******

Shallan climbed up onto the ledge next to Kaladin. She cried out when she caught a glimpse of the drop below, and for a split second lost strength in her limbs, which caused Kaladin to reach out and steady her, helping her find a seat beside him. He started to put an arm around her shoulders, then seemed to think the better of it, instead placing a hand on the stone just behind her.

The view of Urithiru from here was breathtaking—Shallan was shocked she hadn’t once taken it in the night before. Torchlight flickered far below, diffused by passing clouds. Looming in the darkness, she could see Urithiru’s giant windblades, strata faintly glowing in the light of Nomon. It was almost as if they were in a completely different place from where they’d met the night before.

They sat side by side in silence for a long time, watching starspren meander in the sky.

******

After what could have been hours, Shallan slowly tilted her head until it rested on Kaladin’s shoulder. He glanced down at the top of her head, the tips of her nose and eyelashes just visible under a tumble of red locks. The sight reminded him of her as they’d been in the chasms, frozen and desperate, clinging to each other.

Kaladin turned to kiss the top of her head, inhaling the perfume of her clean, soft hair. All doubts were immediately blown clean from his mind. For now, everything was right.

“This is a lot more pleasant now that we’re not in the middle of a highstorm,” he murmured.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Shallan countered. “I thought the lightning was sort of pretty.” She shifted closer to Kaladin, placing her hand on the ledge behind him and burying her face momentarily in his shoulder. He wrapped an arm around her, hand resting comfortably at her waist.

“It is nicer to be dry, though.”

Together they took a deep breath, letting it escape with a sigh. A million more minutes passed.


	9. You Can Show Him Alone

Shallan | Kaladin

“I want to try something,” Shallan finally said. She knew a wiser choice would be to start the hard conversations about coming clean to Adolin and - even more frightening - Jasnah, but this might be her last chance to be alone with Kaladin. They could have hard conversations later. They would have to.

She eased her head off Kaladin’s shoulder, freeing herself carefully from his warm embrace - storms, that was difficult - and onto the smooth stone balcony behind them. Pattern hummed in anticipation on her skirts as Kaladin, curious, hopped easily down behind her, like someone who could never really fall.

Shallan glanced around at the balcony, assessing its dimensions though she guessed she didn’t really have to. Reaching into the pile of stones on the ground, she pulled in enough Stormlight to bathe in.

Gingerly, she stepped over to where Kaladin waited. Clasping a hand on each arm, she asked, “Before I showed you your...home, do you remember what I said?”

******

Kaladin met Shallan’s eyes, gazing up at him with such intensity. Of course he remembered. 

Syl bobbed in the air between them, chanting “Kiss her! Kiss her, Kaladin!” But that didn’t seem quite right, so he simply nodded in response to her question.

“Good.” Shallan seemed anxious, working her lower lip between her teeth. “Oh, storms, I--”

“You love me,” Kaladin blurted. With his arms in her grasp, his instinct to pull her close was interrupted, resulting in an awkward tug that jarred them both out of the moment. He felt so clumsy around her sometimes - maybe with practice...

Shallan let go of Kaladin, laughing softly. She reached up and draped her arms around his neck, looking up at him with a shy grin. “Yes,” she encouraged, voice almost a whisper.

“You love me,” he repeated. Was something supposed to happen?

Exasperated, Syl perched near Shallan’s shoulder, jabbing at the air towards her mouth. “KALADIN. KISS HER. NOW.”

******

Shallan felt a surge of relief as Kaladin pressed his lips to hers, tugging at her Stormlight like a stray thread. It was as if she’d been holding her breath the entire day, waiting to breathe him in like air. Stormfather, she didn’t know anything could feel as unquestionably right as kissing this man. How could she ever deny herself this pleasure? She would worry about it later. Later, later. Shallan tried to focus on the images she’d prepared, attempting to make her Stormlight more accessible to Kaladin somehow. It wasn’t happening. Why did she think it even would?

“Shallan,” buzzed Pattern, “He does not need to help you. You can show him alone.”

“Right,” she responded aloud, pulling from Kaladin’s kiss in an excruciating moment. The warmth in her chest exploded. It felt like an axehound was trapped inside, practically slamming itself into her ribcage.

“I want to show you something.”


	10. Some Greater Magic

Kaladin | Shallan

Shallan stopped kissing Kaladin and shut her eyes. It seemed like she’d been expecting something to happen, as if the kiss were an Ideal that, once sworn, would cause a surge of light and power. Nothing like that had happened. He’d just spoken the truth: Shallan loved him, and he loved her. Whatever other realities they had to deal with, however they chose to proceed, he could be sure this was true. Kaladin still suspected that Shallan had anticipated some greater magic to happen, but the comfort he felt now was enough.

The balcony around them began to transform into a grand banquet hall, Stormlight cascading off Shallan’s skin to form the image. It reminded him of Roshone’s keep. Long, empty tables ran the length of the room, grand tapestries adorning towering walls. The clear night sky was obscured from view by a vaulted ceiling and rafters. Even crafted from Stormlight, the illusion felt dark, damp, and oppressive.

“This,” exhaled Shallan, a cloud of Stormlight curling from her lips, “is my home.” She started to wander around the illusion, as if inspecting it for accuracy. “I thought... I don’t know why I thought this, but I thought somehow I might be able to give you this memory with my Stormlight, the way I used your memories last night. I guess...I’m sorry I was able to Lightweave your memory. You should have control over who can see things like that.”

Shallan’s hand passed through the illusion of a long table, creating a trail of mist behind it. She looked back at him apologetically, almost scared. Did she think he would be angry?

Kaladin felt uncomfortable here. This room was somehow more dreary than the Weeping itself. He itched to ask Shallan to make it go away, to see the sky again and hold her close. He needed to tell her he was leaving soon. He didn’t want to be in this place. As Kaladin began to cross the balcony to Shallan, movement in a doorway caught his eye.

******

Even though Shallan had crafted the Lightweaving from her own memory, the sight of the hall hit her powerfully. It felt smaller than she remembered it, less ominous and more...pitiful. She could practically smell a feast cooking, and - though she was positive she’d left it out of the Lightweaving - hear the whimpers of a servant she couldn’t protect. What had she hoped to accomplish by bringing Kaladin into this memory? The plan was no longer clear to her. She only felt embarrassed.

She was about to apologize to Kaladin when a figure came in from the courtyard. Tet Wikim slunk into the room, shoulders hunched as if in a constant flinch, red hair falling in front of his eyes. He slumped into a chair, fiddling with a pocket knife as he stared blankly ahead.

The figure was crafted from Shallan’s own Stormlight and yet she still felt herself groping in her safepouch for a pen and paper, as if she could even remember a math problem to write down for him. But Wikim was a million miles away. She couldn’t make him feel better, or feel anything for that matter. Storms, this wasn’t even real! A familiar feeling of panic suddenly seized Shallan, closing her windpipe and forcing her to pull in some Stormlight to stay conscious.

******

Kaladin rushed to Shallan from across the balcony as the illusion disappeared around them. She’d frozen at the sight of the young man who’d entered the illusion. A brother? Not the one he’d met on the battlefield all those years ago. Another one, maybe. But before he could reach her, Shallan instantly regained her composure, and then some. Her posture took on an almost regal bearing as she withdrew the illusion, smoothing her skirts and looking sharply at Kaladin upon his approach.

Shallan - though it hardly seemed like her - studied him with a detachment that sent a pang to his heart. “We need to talk,” she said.

******

Radiant regretted having to be so stern with the bridgeman, but it was the only way they were going to make any progress. Shallan could barely get herself out of bed if she was too comfortable. The odds that she would initiate the conversation about what needed to be done were, to put it conservatively, low. Kaladin was...well, he was kind, strong, intense, gorgeous, storming magic. He’d somehow drawn out the most tender part of Shallan, something Radiant suspected could never be undone, even if they wanted. But this relationship was far from the only thing happening on Roshar. They both had duties they couldn’t ignore forever.

Kaladin surprised her by nodding. “We do,” he agreed, clenching his jaw. “I had a visit from Elhokar today.”


	11. Like Urithiru Itself

Kaladin | Shallan

Mishim crawled across the sky, an emerald crescent. Kaladin and Shallan lay on the stone balcony in silence, separated by the pile of gemstones he’d brought along, still faintly glowing. Kaladin watched the third moon’s progress with dread - come morning, the dream would be over and the work would start.

After a long discussion, they had agreed to come clean about what they’d learned about Stormlight - the ‘discovery’, they dubbed it. Shallan felt an academic responsibility to tell Jasnah, and Kaladin knew he owed a report to Dalinar. Stormlight was something they understood so little about, and it was also their greatest tactical advantage. They couldn’t - shouldn't - keep this newfound ability a secret.

Unfortunately, explaining what they discovered would also mean explaining how they discovered it. While they hoped they wouldn’t be asked for details, they agreed to be honest, and to go together when they made their reports.

Then there was Adolin.

Shallan clearly adored the prince. It wasn’t just the betrothal - they had a good, growing relationship, and she cared for him a great deal. Kaladin had seen her swoon over Adolin dramatically from time to time, but he now understood that she loved more than just his charm or his looks. Despite her decision to arrange their midnight meeting, Shallan made plain that she wasn’t trying to get out of her relationship with Adolin, was in fact very happy.

Kaladin found he was fine with that. In fact, it calmed his concerns that Shallan was looking for the kind of love he saw in Rock and his parents, a love he was positive he couldn’t give. Whatever they had, it was something else. This gave him reassurance that there was a path to a future where no one’s heart got broken, but could they find that path? That was another story.

Though he couldn’t feel her, from the corner of his eye he saw the blue-white glow of Syl sitting on his shoulder, sharing the silence.

******

The fingers of Shallan’s freehand were restless. Just a few more inches, and she could reach for Kaladin’s warm hand, slide her fingers between his as the moon drifted by. Over the long, difficult talk, they’d refrained from touching each other, first sitting on the cold stone a few feet apart, hugging their knees, then lying face up to the sky. The news that Kaladin was leaving for Kholinar in a few weeks’ time was disappointing, but it was plenty of time for them to try and sort things out. So they were trying to sort things out. Radiant had graciously stepped back once satisfied that Shallan could handle the discussion on her own.

Kaladin hadn’t seemed upset to learn that Shallan still had feelings for Adolin, still wanted to keep that relationship alive if she could. It was a pleasant surprise to see that he was genuinely concerned about Adolin’s wellbeing as they dealt with the riddens of this storm. They didn’t know what to tell her betrothed or how, but they knew they couldn’t keep him in the dark about what had happened these past two nights.

But how do you tell the man you’re planning to marry about another attraction so powerful it made you orchestrate a secret tryst? And how do you explain that that attraction isn’t instead of your love for him, but in addition to? What is he supposed to do with that? For the first time, the realization came over Shallan that Adolin might leave her over this. The prospect filled her with dread. If she lost Adolin, would any of this have been worth it?

And yet, it was glorious to know that her love for Kaladin was reciprocated, nearly as glorious as being in his arms or drinking Stormlight from his lips. How badly she wanted to spend the rest of this night doing just that, but she couldn’t. They hadn’t said as much, but there seemed to be a silent consensus that these meetings would have to end. Even if explaining everything to Adolin meant he left her, it couldn’t - and wouldn’t - be replaced by her relationship with Kaladin.

Storms, that relationship felt like Urithiru itself. She saw the awesome cluster of gems at its heart, felt it loom grand in the darkness, but couldn’t figure out how to make it work right. Shallan felt the warmth in her chest around Kaladin, palpable and alive, but didn’t know how it was supposed to power the fabrial. Passionate as she and Kaladin were to one another, they seemed to jam from time to time, as if snagged on some hook they couldn’t see. It was awkward, jarring, and it told her that something wasn’t quite right. Maybe with time a new path would emerge, but now it was all darkness.

Unable to resist any longer, Shallan extended her arm until her fingers brushed Kaladin’s. He didn’t take her hand, but the place where they touched made the warmth leap in her chest.

“Oh storms,” she exhaled. A tear rolled down her face, running past her neck to the stone.


	12. Palona

Kaladin | Shallan

Kaladin felt the soft pressure of Shallan’s fingertips on the back of his hand. He wanted so badly to reach for her, pull her to him, which, lying down as they both were, could be dangerous. Better not. Tomorrow would be hard enough already. Shallan was intelligent - she would have the words to explain what they needed to say to Dalinar and Jasnah, hopefully Adolin too. Kaladin was stubborn - he would make them keep their appointments and stand unflinching under judgment. He’d been berated before, and worse. Whatever the response turned out to be, he could withstand it. It was only love, after all - why should they be so afraid to express it?

The thought frustrated him. The literal Desolations had arrived, and they had to tiptoe around like criminals because they had discovered they were in love? They had made a potentially crucial discovery about Stormlight, but they were timid to report it because it came from a kiss? Damnation, it was absurd.

Agitated, Kaladin jolted to a seat, turning to Shallan, who propped herself up on an elbow, a look of concern crossing her face. He sucked in the remaining Stormlight from the gemstones between them, leaving the balcony in darkness save for the glow of their two bodies.

Storms, she was beautiful. And she loved him. Kaladin realized with certainty that this could be taken from him somehow. But not tonight. Not yet.

******

Kaladin sat bolt upright, glowing with the Stormlight he had just pulled from the gems on the ground. He glanced down at Shallan, looking bothered by something, then hopped to his feet. Shallan took the hand he offered and was pulled to standing. The glow of Mishim behind him gave Kaladin a faint green aura. He seemed different all of a sudden, as if he had switched to a new persona, his own angry Veil.

Somewhat roughly, he pulled Shallan into his embrace and Lashed them both into the sky.

“Kaladin? Kaladin, are you all right?” Shallan searched his eyes, which he kept grimly focused on some spot off in the distance, ignoring her with his gaze but holding her uncomfortably tight. They were shooting rapidly into the air, higher than he’d Lashed her the night before, and he wasn’t slowing down. Shallan clutched hard at the back of his uniform - yes, the whole time he’d been wearing his uniform, she didn’t even know if he had other clothes - with her nose buried in the hollow between his collarbones. She repeated his name over and over, speaking directly into the rough fabric, hoping she could calm him, bring him back from wherever he’d gone. She could feel his heart racing and tried slowing her own pulse, as if that would soothe him somehow. The chill of the air told her they had to be hundreds of feet up already.

Then, without warning, they slowed down.

******

“Kaladin? Kaladin, what’s wrong?”

Syl kept pace with him as he carried Shallan upward. Kaladin knew he was running from time itself, retreating to the safety of the skies, but he didn’t know what else to do. He felt protective of the warmth he had discovered inside his own heart, whose twin beat in the body he held close. It couldn’t be taken from him now. But somehow it would be. The dread tasted acrid in his mouth.

“Kaladin, please slow down. Can you hear me? Kaladin!” Syl began to zip around him and Shallan frantically, waving her arms around. “Hey! What are you doing?! Can’t you see you're scaring her?”

He suddenly became aware of the heat of Shallan’s breath on his collar, the rhythmic chant of her voice murmuring his name, over and over again.

He slowed their ascent. Once they came to a stop, Shallan looked up at him, eyes wide.

******

Kaladin peered down into Shallan’s face, his expression softening into something of an apology.

“They’re going to force us apart, Shallan,” he said, by way of explanation. “They’re going to make you leave me. I...I’m not ready for that.”

The thought hadn’t occurred to her, but she knew he was right. They were in a new age - Dalinar was married to his own sister-in-law, the Vorin church undermined left and right by the realities of the Desolations, humans turned Radiant by Ideals sworn to spren - but despite all that, there was still custom, as immutable as stone. There would be pressure, lots of pressure, for Shallan to “do the right thing” and end her “fling with the bridgeman". She would be told it was a phase, that her feelings would pass. Their love would be trivialized before it was understood, with no regard for Kaladin’s feelings whatsoever. Kaladin would be sent away even sooner, kept out of the picture on more "missions" across Roshar. Storms, Ialai Sadeas would have a field day. Palona too, probably, she loved to--

“Palona!” Shallan blurted.

“What?” Kaladin asked, looking puzzled and a bit annoyed.

Palona. She was Sebarial’s mistress, had been for years, and neither of them gave a crem what anyone thought. They loved each other deeply and were a powerful team. People maybe didn’t approve of them or take them seriously, but Shallan saw from the inside that they were never to be underestimated. She could accept that fate. If Alethi society - Jasnah and Dalinar included - had trouble with this, that was not their problem. She and Kaladin would figure out how to keep loving.

“Nothing,” Shallan grinned in what she hoped was a mysterious way. She shrugged away the voice that nagged at her, 'what about Adolin?'. It was too hard. She needed to feel victorious now.

******

Kaladin saw hope in Shallan’s eyes as she exclaimed the name of Sebarial’s mistress. What could that possibly mean?

Shallan became giddy all of a sudden, an irresistible smile playing across her lips. She acted like Palona was a secret weapon, something that would make all their problems go away. Though he guessed it was stupid of him, Kaladin allowed himself to be soothed by that smile. What else was there to lose?

“I’m going to kiss you,” Shallan declared with utter seriousness, “and I want you to take all my Stormlight, and I want to fly with you to the top of Urithiru and look out on the world. I love you, Kaladin Stormblessed, and I’m a storming Knight Radiant. Nobody can force me to do anything.”

“Technically,” Kaladin corrected, “it’s not flying. It’s just falling in a different direction.”

Shallan laughed, then she kissed him. The Stormlight rushed in like wind.


	13. Windy

Dalinar | Shallan

Dalinar stepped out onto the roof of Urithiru. He’d left Navani awake in their rooms, glaring at plans for a new fabrial that weren’t quite _right_. The weight of what he’d learned from the Stormfather - that the “madman” in Kholinar had been Talenel’Elin himself, that all of Roshar had been protected from Desolations by the will of that one individual, was sinking in with all its significance. That individual was back. The Desolations were truly here. Sleep wouldn’t be possible tonight. And if he couldn’t sleep, he would take some time alone to think.

Stepping back onto the roof filled Dalinar with a vision of Navani on their wedding night. After all these years, he was standing in the place where they were married, and she was working by the bed they now shared. As he kissed her on his way out, Dalinar was struck by Navani’s utter perfection. Lit by a fabrial, her hair cascaded down one shoulder, mouth screwed to one side as she pored over schematics. Her exposed safehand absently tapped the desk as she studied. Dalinar had long noticed that subtle movement under the cover of her sleeve, but the rhythmic motion of her strong fingers tonight was enough of a distraction for him to excuse himself.

How long he had loved her. Memories from his youth were not easy to come by, but Dalinar could hardly recall a day of his life when he had not known Navani, had not been utterly enchanted by every facet of her. And yet they had each married different people, made families, raised children, been...happy, after a fashion. All the while, the same love he carried for her was forced to smolder somewhere hidden, never knowing if it would see the light of day. Dalinar didn’t think things could have happened between him and Navani any other way, but did it mean he was glad Gavilar was dead? Given the chance, would he go back and save his brother if it meant never being able to love his wife in the open? An impossible choice.

Dalinar stepped close to the edge of the roof. The cold night wind invigorated him, whipping at his clothes and hair. Brisk air filled his lungs, blowing the conundrum from his mind. There was no changing the past, so there was no use in torturing himself. He watched as Mishim set, a green sliver approaching the horizon. From this height, Dalinar looked _down_ on the moon itself. Up here, it was hard to remember the Desolations had arrived - everything was so distant, so small. He felt deeply grateful for the stillness here, a refuge from the storms themselves.

Then, from the corner of his eye, he noticed something.

******

Shallan let out a hum of pleasure as the Stormlight rushed from her to Kaladin. Pattern buzzed along from a spot on her shoulder, completely tickled by this practice. Long after every drop of Shallan’s Stormlight was drained, Kaladin continued to kiss her hungrily, urgently, as if she might disappear at any second. 

A gust of wind pushed at Shallan's back, and Kaladin paused their ascent to keep them from sailing away, though honestly she wouldn't have minded being blown clear across the continent in Kaladin's arms. 

Kaladin broke from the kiss with a chuckle.

"Windy," he observed, pulling away to gently separate Shallan's hair where it mixed with his own. His hands were clasped tight around her in maddening closeness.

"Very," Shallan agreed, delighted out of her mind. She startled giggling uncontrollably, resulting in a horrible snorting sound that made her laugh even harder. Nothing was better than this, absolutely nothing.

”Um,” the concern in Kaladin’s voice was jarring and disappointing, his arms suddenly stiff around her. Shallan was startled out of her laughter, feeling suddenly vulnerable. What could possibly be wrong all the way up here? 

”We’ve been spotted,” Kaladin explained, gesturing with his head to one side.

Shallan took a look around, surprised to see that they had already reached the full height of Urithiru, barely visible in the darkness a few hundred feet off.

In the fading light of Mishim, she could just make out the silhouette of a large and imposing figure standing on the roof, glowing faintly with Stormlight. The figure caught sight of them, peering in their direction.

Shallan knew it could be only one person.

******

Kaladin Stormblessed and Shallan Davar landed lightly on the roof of Urithiru. Kaladin glowed brightly with Stormlight in the darkness, but He noticed the young woman’s skin carried no light at all. Since gaining his powers, Dalinar was never without at least a little Stormlight, unless he’d drained it to heal an injury. Had something happened to her? And why come here if she'd been injured?

“Shallan, are you hurt?” he called out. “Where’s your Stormlight?”

It was hard to make out much in the darkness, but as Dalinar strode over to the pair he noticed that she was standing steady on her own, so no immediate danger. Good.

“I’m fine, Brightlord,” Shallan responded. “And...the captain has my Stormlight. We were actually hoping to talk to you about that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a hot second i was toying with the idea that somehow these two had jointly bonded a Lightspren, but that did not at all pan out, so this chapter is a little different from the original.


	14. The Way You Would Expect

“You figured out that you can pass Stormlight by kissing?”

“That’s right, sir.” Kaladin let out a short exhale. They clearly hadn’t expected to have this conversation right now, but then, neither did Dalinar. 

“Well, you can _take_ it that way,” he clarified. “You can’t give it. We’re not sure why.”

“And you figured this out…"

“The way you would expect, sir.”

“Very well. Would you care to demonstrate?”

Kaladin and Shallan exchanged a glance. Then, the young woman placed a timid kiss on the bridgeman’s lips. Immediately, she began to glow.

“Storms,” breathed Dalinar.

As an as-yet-undiscovered trait of Stormlight, Dalinar approved of them coming to him with this discovery. But storms, kissing? His son’s betrothed and the bridgeman? He squinted at the two young people, and took a few steps away from where they stood.

Dalinar went to ask the Stormfather if he knew anything about this, but quickly remembered how disturbed the spren had become during their discussion earlier in the day. This could wait.

The tactical advantages of this weren’t clear to Dalinar. You could draw Stormlight from spheres several feet away, which was already more convenient than coming in direct contact with someone else’s mouth. Possibly someone with healing powers like Renarin could use it as an emergency measure to collect Stormlight from nearby Radiants, in order to treat people more quickly? He tried to imagine Renarin, so reluctant to touch even those dearest to him, locking lips with whoever happened to have Stormlight nearby. He wouldn’t want to ask that of his son under any circumstance.

Dalinar stood examining them for what he hoped was an uncomfortably long time. Kaladin had found parade rest easily enough, but he constantly stole protective glances at Shallan, as if being physically separated from him put her in some sort of danger. Shallan seemed not to know what to do with her hands or how to stand still, shifting her weight from foot to foot, freehand cupped in her safehand in front of her. The girl seemed almost ready to bolt, anchored only by Kaladin’s presence beside her. What was going on between these two?

“I assume you haven’t spoken of this to anyone else.”

“No, sir,” replied Kaladin, acting more subordinate than he’d ever seen the man. Shallan was uncharacteristically quiet, which suited Dalinar at the moment. He longed for the stillness he had enjoyed just moments ago. Storms, there were other things to worry about just now.

“Good. Come here, captain.”

Kaladin and Shallan jumped slightly, exchanging another spooked glance. Let them be uncomfortable. He storming was.

******

Kaladin halted within arms’ reach of Dalinar. He had considered the possibility of having to demonstrate the discovery, but that didn’t make it any easier for him to approach the single most forbidding figure on Roshar and consider giving him a kiss. He wondered how Navani managed.

Dalinar frowned, then put his hands on Kaladin’s shoulders, looking level at his eyes.

“I’m going to kiss you now, soldier.”

“Yes, sir.”


	15. Always a Team

Kaladin | Dalinar | Shallan

The experience of having his Stormlight taken was familiar to Kaladin, but nothing else. In order to meet the highprince’s lips, he had to tilt his chin up ever so slightly, his nose scraping against Dalinar’s stubble, mere hours away from being shaved clean. A _heat_ seemed to radiate off the man, like stone baking in the sun, and though the kiss was perfunctory and short, as he’d hoped, Kaladin hadn’t expected it to feel so...full. When the highprince stepped back, he had to catch his breath, ignoring Syl hovering near Dalinar’s shoulder with her mouth hanging open. 

The older man pondered for a moment, working his jaw as if chewing on stale rations. Behind him, the horizon took on a violet cast as the sun began its daily progress. Involuntarily, Kaladin thought back to the same time the previous morning, Shallan’s mussed hair and the ghosts of his brands across her brow. He was relieved when Dalinar gave him a nod that sent him back to Shallan’s side, letting him share a glance with her as he returned to his place. Storms, she looked uncomfortable.

Contemplation over, Dalinar finally spoke. “I would never have expected that to work. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Captain, do you have enough Stormlight to get back to your quarters?” His eyes rested on Shallan. “And Brightness Davar as well?”

“I do, sir,” he replied, a little surprised at the suggestion that he escort Shallan home.

“Very well. Your orders are not to speak of this to any—”

“Brightlord,” Shallan suddenly broke in, “I need to tell Brightness Jasnah. She should know. We won’t tell anyone else - Storms, we don’t want to anyway - but after all the work Jasnah did to bring us to this point, we owe her every finding as soon as it comes. Before we - met you here, we were planning to see you both first thing tomorrow. Well, today I suppose.”

Shallan glanced over at Kaladin for confirmation. He wasn’t sure what she would say, but gave a small nod anyway. “We still plan to visit her, as soon as practical.”

******

Newly infused with Stormlight, lips warm from their contact with the bridgeman’s, Dalinar looked over at the two Radiants. There was an embarrassment to the way they stood, but also a defiance. In a flash of recognition, he realized that the two young people reminded him of himself and Gavilar as young boys, brought in front of their father after breaking some rule or object. Never mind who had instigated the adventure or who had gotten them caught, they were always a team. Sometimes Gavilar could talk them out of trouble, but they always took the fall together and and got right back up to trouble. Dalinar found he recognized between Kaladin and Shallan that same protectiveness, loyalty, boldness, love. Love. They storming did love each other, didn’t they.

It occured to Dalinar that any efforts to keep them apart would only cause more problems. There would have to be some other way of dealing with...this.

Oh, Adolin. Poor boy.

Dalinar looked at Shallan. In the thin light of the early morning, he could tell the gangly Veden was studying him, sussing his reactions, anxious but still calculating. Shallan had clearly been keen on keeping her attraction to Kaladin a secret, so why was she was now so intent on sharing all with Jasnah?

Aside from Navani, his niece was the only person in the world Dalinar trusted with this information, but he was irked by the girl’s insistence on acting regardless of his approval. Storms, he was tired.

******

Dalinar seemed bothered. Even Kaladin turned to Shallan the moment after she informed the highprince that she would see Jasnah whether he approved or not. It was an odd time for defiance - Shallan felt fairly sure that Dalinar would have discussed this with Jasnah of his own volition, but a stubborn part of her wanted to be the one to get credit for this discovery, to be the axehound dropping a caught cremling at the feet of its master. She was sure the meeting would come with its share of judgment, but storms, she - they - had discovered something incredible. 

“Brightness Davar,” Dalinar replied after another measured pause. It was like talking to someone on the peak of another mountain, the pauses had been so great, “I agree that it would be wise to inform my niece of what you’ve learned. But beyond that, you will remain silent. Both of you, is that understood?”

“Yes, sir," replied Kaladin, almost automatically. It was strange to see him snap into military mode in front of Dalinar. Like watching another person. 

“Yes," replied Shallan, before hastily adding "...Brightlord.”

“You’ll have to...determine how to proceed with my son, but it need not involve your telling him what you’ve learned about Stormlight. I believe you care for Adolin, Miss Davar, so please act accordingly. Don’t force me to involve myself in your private affairs...”

Adolin. She had been ignoring that storm on the horizon. It was so hard to know where to even begin, especially when her only interest at the moment was the man standing beside her. Later. Later. Talk to Jasnah first, think about Adolin later. Abruptly, Shallan realized that both Dalinar and Kaladin were looking at her, waiting for her to do something. She looked to Kaladin, who nodded ever so slightly, then turned to Dalinar and said, “Yes, Brightlord.”

Satisfied, the highprince dismissed them.


	16. The Most Precious Secret in the Whole Universe

Shallan was desperate to reach for Kaladin’s hand as they walked back to the edge of the roof. She turned to him, ready to put her arms around his neck and fly into the rosy morning, but he gently placed a hand on her shoulder, whispering, “Maybe I should just Lash you…for now.”

Right. Had she already forgotten how he’d sent her up into the air just two nights ago? They didn’t _have_ to fly around in each other’s arms. It was just nicer that way. Probably better not to fall into Kaladin’s embrace right in front of the Highprince. She nodded in agreement, and, facing out onto the sky, said, “Let’s go.”

******

“Did you know about this?” Dalinar asked the Stormfather as he watched his son’s betrothed and the captain of the guard soar down off Urithiru. Now that a new day was beginning, he hoped the spren might be ready to talk.

_IT IS HARD TO REMEMBER. BUT PERHAPS, YES. PERHAPS I KNEW ONCE. THE PRACTICE IS LONG OUT OF USE._

“Any idea if it’s useful?”

_NO._

Fine, then.

“Kaladin’s spren is an honorspren, isn’t she?”

The response came with sounds of thunder.

_He is bonded to her. He has spoken the words. But she does not_ belong _to him._

Was it...bitterness Dalinar detected in the Stormfather’s words?

“Forgive me. She does not belong to him.”

_This apology is accepted._

“And Shallan...she is bonded to…”

_A Cryptic. A Liespren._

Could there be some attraction between their spren somehow? It didn’t seem likely that an honorspren and a liespren would be natural mates, but then, maybe things worked differently for spren.

“Could their...could the spren that Kaladin and Shallan are bonded to be driving their intimacy?”

The Stormfather rumbled, more softly this time. Was that a laugh?

_Son of Honor, we do not fall prey to the weaknesses of men. If these humans desire to mate, do not blame the spren._

So much for that theory. Dalinar squinted as the sun finally edged past the horizon, sending its first golden rays across the massive ancient city. He began the descent to his rooms where, hopefully, at least Navani had gotten some sleep.

_******_

Shallan gripped Kaladin’s hand tightly as they plummeted down off the roof of Urithiru. She had her skirts clamped between her legs to keep them from flying up around her face, and her hair snapped wildly as it caught the wind. She felt like a skyeel, no, like rain itself, only they were still so far above the clouds. Even rain didn’t fall from this height.

She let out a whoop as the sun made its entrance before them, which made her realize she’d stopped breathing until that point. A bad habit. She quickly checked on her Stormlight - there was still some left, enough to heal up, just in case.

Shallan turned to Kaladin, only to realize he was already watching her. He looked so storming _comfortable_ out here in the middle of nothing, a windspren zipping around him in a ribbon of light. Kaladin gave her a grin, as if the sunrise in front of them was the most precious secret of the whole universe. Then, they took a turn, swooping in an arc towards a place Shallan already knew by heart.

******

The gold light of the rising sun gave Shallan a breathtaking radiance. By now, Kaladin was used to seeing the cool glow of a person holding Stormlight, and this was different. Streaming behind her, Shallan's red hair flickered and glinted like flame. Her eyes seemed to reflect the very sky, pupils contracted to pinpricks by the sun's direct rays. She looked the way he had always imagined Shalash, Herald of Beauty, and Kaladin realized with a smile that anytime he heard someone utter the phrase "Ash's eyes," he would be reminded of this perfect, golden moment. How wonderful.

The day was beginning, but before they made the pilgrimage to their next confession, Kaladin wanted just one more moment with Shallan. As they rushed through the air down the side of Urithiru, a very inviting balcony came into view.


	17. Illicit

Jasnah | Kaladin | Shallan

“Have you tried intercourse?”

Jasnah struggled to maintain a straight face as her ward and the bridgeman’s jaws dropped in concert, their faces as red as their eyes were wide. So they hadn’t. That was a relief. 

“No! Bright--Brightness! No, no of course we haven’t!” stammered Shallan. “We --”

“That’s a shame,” Jasnah cut her off, attempting a disappointed look. She was glad she’d risen early and was already up and dressed when Shallan knocked on her door at this illogical hour. It was far harder to be intimidating in a nightgown.

The bridgeman looked like he wanted to Soulcast himself into dust. Jasnah continued her lecture. “I would have hoped, Shallan, that your training would have taught you to pursue additional experimentation based on your findings. You discovered that Stormlight transference was possible through a kiss. Only logical to determine whether that property was possible through other means.” Jasnah glanced down at Ivory, who was watching Shallan and Kaladin with utter fascination from the vantage point of her desk. “Though I suppose it's not too late...”

The Windrunner who had apparently saved Dalinar and every other living Kholin was grasping at a semblance of composure, obviously not expecting this line of discussion. He had entered the room with a grim expression, shoulders squared as if prepared to confront a highstorm. Now he was red as a boiled cremling, arms tightly crossed.

“Brightness,” he said combatively, “you misunderstand what we’re telling you. We didn’t - we’re not - it’s not that way.” He seemed in anguish. Jasnah felt a little bad to see him squirm. Just a little.

“I see,” she replied. “My understanding was that my ward, who is betrothed to my cousin, contacted you in secret, so that you could meet in secret, upon which time you confessed your love to one another and kissed at least enough times to discover that it was possible to take each other’s Stormlight. Further, the following night you met again under similar conditions to engage in nearly identical activities. Given the secrecy, your actions bespeak an attraction that you at least subconsciously acknowledge as illicit. The actions themselves bespeak an attraction that is, at least in part, sexual. Please enlighten me as to what I have misunderstood.”

******

Kaladin had never before been confronted with the full attention of Jasnah Kholin. When she was presumed dead, she’d occasionally been the subject of discussion in rooms where he was on duty, but the two of them had never shared space, certainly never addressed each other. Every description he’d heard of Jasnah matched the woman before him: intimidating, emotionless, keen minded, beautiful. Her eyes smoldered with an intensity that felt like an open challenge. Kaladin would never cower before a lighteyes, but something about this woman still made him want to genuflect. He didn’t like that. Syl, oblivious to the tension, was walking across Jasnah’s desk, squinting at papers neither of them could read. At least somebody here wasn’t uncomfortable.

Jasnah’s words had been leveled at him, but Shallan broke through with the response.

“Brightness, when I lost you—when, when I thought you were dead, I kept my powers secret from everyone, fearing I would lose everything I’d traveled to the Shattered Plains to achieve.”

“Including the betrothal,” Jasnah interjected.

“Yes,” Shallan conceded, “including the betrothal. I had no intention of doing Adolin wrong, Brightness, I swear.

“But—“ she added quickly, as Jasnah made moves to respond, “during that time, Kaladin saved my life in the chasms. And he turned out to be one of the only other Radiants we know of. But because of Adolin, because of the future with him you made possible, I knew I should never attempt a relationship with Kaladin. It would be, like you said, illicit.

Shallan exhaled as if she’d been holding her breath, and the cloud of Stormlight that escaped her lips told Kaladin she had been. She looked over at him with mixed fear and encouragement, then continued.

“It was my idea to get together secretly, at night. I don’t know if you know what it’s like to see a person across a room to whom you owe your life but can’t sincerely thank, a person who is maybe one of the only people who _is_ what you are, a person who held you safe during the long night of a highstorm. Who - on top of all that - just the thought of them makes your insides glow, and you know that if anyone caught a glimpse of that light you’d be in big trouble.

Shallan's words expanded inside Kaladin, filling every corner of his heart with a glorious comfort. He hadn’t noticed until now, but something about Shallan seemed different. She seemed more vibrant, almost shimmering. It had to be an illusion, though she still looked like herself. Just...more. Jasnah was frowning at them with her arms crossed, but she also wasn’t interrupting. Hopefully that was good.

“I didn’t even know if Kaladin would meet me that night, but I am so glad, so glad he did. And when we discovered something new about Stormlight, we knew it was our duty to share our findings with you and the Highprince. We could have hidden this, like I hid my powers for all that time, but we know there’s more at stake than just protecting our love.

“Because...this isn’t just a fling, Jasn—Brightness. I guess that’s what we think you might not understand. We don’t know exactly how or in what way, but we love each other. And, we would prefer not to do any of the experiments you suggested, thank you.”

******

Shallan was grateful for the Lightweaving that had enveloped her, giving her a confident, straight-backed defiance. She hadn’t expected to confess so much, especially not in front of Kaladin, and the exertion made her feel like a dun sphere. It was all she could do to remain standing under Jasnah’s scrutiny. To the side, she felt Kaladin’s eyes on her. He probably hadn’t been expecting to hear all that, either. Hopefully he agreed.

Jasnah tapped her freehand fingers against her elbow, arms crossed. She was looking at the strata on a wall, considering something, maybe listening to her spren? Had she heard anything Shallan had just said? Shallan took the opportunity to glance back over at Kaladin, who stood as steady as she hoped the Lightweaving made her look. He locked eyes with her, mouth turned up ever so slightly at the corners. She smiled back in what she hoped was an equally conspiratorial way.

“Shallan,” Jasnah said to the wall, as if as an afterthought, “I’d like to attempt to take some of your Stormlight. Please come here.” 


	18. This is Irregular

Kaladin | Jasnah | Shallan

Shallan obediently crossed to where Jasnah was perched on the edge of her desk. Syl, apparently bored with the papers, flew up curiously to the air between the two women. Kaladin noticed she took a wider berth than it looked like she needed to, flying in an arc as if avoiding something. He guessed it must be Jasnah’s spren, and that Jasnah’s spren must be enormous. Something about that bothered him.

Without prompting, Shallan drew in Stormlight from wherever she kept it, her skin taking on luminescence. Though she looked timid and small next to the older woman’s imposing figure, Kaladin was struck by how much he loved to simply _see_ her, to be in the same room. It was as if being near Shallan lent him an extra point of contact with the earth, holding him just a little more steadily. 

Jasnah drew up to standing from the spot on her desk she’d been leaning on, looking down on Shallan though she wasn’t much taller. “Several of the known Radiants are family,” she pointed out, “so this ability is likely to cause discomfort, or at least be impractical for quite some time. Nevertheless, it should be logged until more non-familial Radiants are revealed.”

She lifted Shallan’s chin gently with the thumb and forefinger of her freehand.

“Let’s make it quick, now.”

******

Jasnah studied Shallan as she closed her eyes, checking for signs that she was hiding any unwillingness. It wouldn’t do for the girl to feel violated, and if the ability was real, it could be tested later if necessary. Reading body language had never come easily to Jasnah, but she saw no trembling or squinting, no clenched hands. Shallan's breath was shallow but her face was relaxed. So her ward had been prepared to share her findings. Good.

Kissing was hardly an activity Jasnah had done with any frequency, so she tried to be precise and deliberate. Once her lips and Shallan’s touched, she became aware of the new source of Stormlight and drew some in. That done, she disengaged. 

“I do not recall anything like this,” Ivory said as he examined Shallan from a full human height. The girl’s eyes had opened wide, and she seemed dazed. “It is, yet we were not aware. Curious.” He took a seat on the desk behind Jasnah.

“Thank you, Shallan, for confirming the phenomenon,” Jasnah said, prompting the girl to take her place beside the bridgeman. She didn’t move. Maybe she hadn't heard?

“Shallan,” Jasnah repeated, putting a touch of guiding pressure on her arm, “that will be all.”

Shallan started, then gave a nod and wandered back to where she’d been standing.

******

As Stormlight left her body, Shallan felt all the breath go along with it. Jasnah hadn’t taken much, but the warmth and pressure of the woman’s lips was overwhelming in a way she couldn’t have anticipated. At this proximity, Shallan felt the moisture of Jasnah’s breath, smelled the spice of her perfume. She knew the brief kiss was all in the name of research, but Almighty, what a feeling.

Shallan was so distracted by the experience that she had to be sent back to her place beside Kaladin, like a child.

Pattern hummed from somewhere on her dress. “Mmmm, this is irregular. This is irregular, Shallan, isn’t it?”

Jasnah was saying something. Hopefully Kaladin could tell her what.

******

“You’ve discovered something fascinating, potentially important, and have done well in reporting these findings to me and to my uncle,” Jasnah said as Shallan returned to her place beside the bridgeman. “As to your...relationship,” she continued, eyeing the two young people, “your duty is to my cousin Adolin. Assuming you both remain capable of standing by your commitments, the rest is not my business. Adolin has the agency to make his own judgments in his own affairs.” 

Jasnah expected the bridgeman to exhibit hostility or embarrassment at the mention of Adolin's name. Weren't men territorial, or something? He simply shared the same look of concern that clouded Shallan's face. Curious.

“For the moment, I will keep your findings between myself and my uncle. I expect you to do the same, though it’s doubtful you need to be told. At the meeting today, we will behave as if this conversation never occured. Is that understood?”

Shallan, still looking glazed over, nodded. The bridgeman begrudgingly inclined his head in acknowledgment. Gruff and unsmiling, it was unclear what appeal he held over Adolin. Not that either of them were Jasnah's type. Her type had a spine. And pages.

Jasnah dismissed them and took a seat behind her desk.


	19. We Did Not Know It Was

Shallan | Jasnah | Kaladin

Jasnah had chosen rooms that were hidden deep in Urithiru, so even though people would be up and about at this hour, Shallan felt comfortable that she could walk with Kaladin unseen. Even so, He took up a position slightly behind her, as if escorting her from Jasnah’s chambers. As they walked, Shallan turned her head back to ask, “What did she say?”

“What did who say?”

“Jasnah, what did she say?”

“You mean when we were in the same room as her while she was talking just now?”

“I was...distracted.”

Kaladin sped up slightly to keep pace beside Shallan. “You know, turning back every few seconds to whisper at me sort of ruins the illusion that I’m just bodyguarding you.”

“Could you maybe bodyguard me from right here?” Shallan hooked her arm through Kaladin’s. “I feel very protected right now, so guarded...bodily. You are very good at your job, which you are doing.”

“Thank you.”

For a brief moment, Shallan let herself pretend they were on a normal morning stroll, just two people arm-in-arm, not in possession of a million secrets. It was lovely. She turned to Kaladin, who looked over at her with a heart-melting smile. Storms, she wished she could capture that smile and lock it in a gemstone forever.

“So... what did she say?”

******

Once the door shut, Jasnah turned to Ivory. “How could we possibly have missed any mention of Stormlight being transferred this way?”

“We did not know it was,” replied Ivory thoughtfully. “Possibly the knowledge was lost, long before we were lost? I cannot say. Such a fascinating property. However, if we did not know, it cannot be widely known.”

“Good,” Jasnah replied. The discovery could potentially be useful to them, was at least worth experimenting with further. But, it was obvious that the contact engaged in by Shallan and the bridgeman would be improper to enforce amongst future Radiants. At any rate, she was certainly not interested in participating herself. In an unappealing future, people new to their powers and lacking proper guidance could be pressured into romantic contact with others on the basis that it was necessary for some purpose or another. No, this was not something she wanted people to know about. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

“Let’s go and visit my uncle before this meeting starts,” Jasnah told Ivory. When she opened the door to leave, she heard the voices of a young man and woman speaking warmly to one another, not too far off.

******

Shallan looked up at Kaladin, her arm wound tight around his. She’d apparently snapped out of whatever trance she’d fallen into after kissing Jasnah. He would need to ask her about that later. He still hadn’t described to her how it had been having Dalinar...take his Stormlight, and it seemed like the experience was even more disorienting for Shallan. So strange, all of this.

He looked down into those bright blue eyes, which he was so accustomed to resenting in other people. On Shallan, though, the color reminded him not of status, but the skies. He realized he was smiling.

Syl floated next to his ear and whispered, “Guess what I think you should do.” But before the impulse could leave his lips, Shallan had a question.

“So... what did she say?”

“She said,” interrupted a voice behind them, “that your responsibility towards Adolin is your own affair, and that, so long as you are able to keep those commitments intact, the rest is none of my business. Please make an effort to pay attention, Brightness Davar. It is quite literally the least you could do.”

Kaladin and Shallan stepped to the side, allowing the older woman to sweep past them in the corridor. He swore he could feel a cold wind following behind.

“Also,” Kaladin added under his breath, “apparently there’s a meeting we’re both supposed to be at. We should probably make sure we go to it.”

“Oh. Damnation,” exhaled Shallan, “Of course there is.”

Shallan hooked her arm around his and started them walking again. 

“We should go home now, shouldn’t we.”

Home. What a strange idea. The first place he thought of was the balcony, but of course she meant the barracks for him, Sebarial’s quarter for her. Right.

“Good idea,” he responded. “Bridge Four is probably already whispering about where I’ve been these past two nights. I should see if there are any fires to put out.”

“Yes, that’s probably a good idea.”

“All right then.”

“All right then.”

“So... I’ll see you at the meeting.”

“Yes. ...Can I have a little Stormlight for a disguise?” Shallan looked at him mischievously.

“If I open my eyes and I’m kissing Rock, I will never speak to you again.”

“I won’t.”

“Or myself.”

“I promise.”

“Or anyone named Kholin.”

“I’m not a monster, Kaladin.”

“Then yes.” Kaladin placed a hand at the nape of Shallans’ neck, weaving his fingers through the cascade of her hair. A wave of anticipation crashed over him in the split second before their lips touched, like the moment between lighting and thunder. He felt Shallan draining his Stormlight, and, knowing she could heal it immediately, took her lower lip between his teeth and bit hard.


	20. Limited Expressions of Love

Navani | Dalinar

There was a knock on the door, immediately followed by the figure of Jasnah in their doorway.

“Looks nice, mother.”

Navani smiled at her daughter in the mirror as she finished placing the second hairspike into a braided chignon. No matter how elaborate she made her hair, Dalinar thought everything was some kind of bun, just like his brother. She didn't care _so_ much, but it was nice for her efforts to be appreciated now and then. And storms, was it wonderful to have her baby girl back home, even if home now was some strange ancient fabrial city.

“Have a seat, love,” Navani said through teeth clenched on a hairpin.

“Gemheart,” she called to Dalinar, shaving in the room beyond, “Jasnah’s here.” She freed the pin from her mouth, secured a braid with it, and turned from the mirror to face her daughter. Even for Jasnah, she seemed in a mood. This should be fun. Navani went to the bed across from where Jasnah had perched on the desk, and settled in.

“I suppose you’ve been visited by our lovesick Radiants, then.”

******

“...completely irresponsible! Never mind that they happened to stumble upon a groundbreaking discovery, she -- I initiated a contract on her behalf, with a member of my OWN FAMILY, and the only thing she had to do to honor that contract was keep it in her havah! And to have the audacity to ask me if I ‘know what it feels like’ to ‘have feelings,’ as if that mattered at all. I certainly have feelings now. Are you laughing?”

Dalinar lost track of Jasnah’s words over the sound of water running into the basin, rinsing it clean of stubble and soap. A shave and a little extra Stormlight after the sleepless night had him feeling somewhat human again. He’d anticipated a visit from his niece once Shallan and Kaladin had made their report, and, from what he could make out, this was that visit.

Curiously, Navani hadn’t seemed distressed by the news Dalinar brought back to bed with him this morning. She was intrigued by the new property of Stormlight and eager to research it, and was not at all troubled by the aspect involving the girl and the bridgeman sneaking off in the night. It didn’t surprise him that Jasnah’s outburst was making Navani laugh.

Dalinar wished he had troubled to put on a shirt after emerging from bed. Hopefully Jasnah wouldn’t mind. She’d seen far worse from him, after all.

“...and it’s not clear to me what is so attractive about this bridgeman. Shallan mumbled something about chasms and glowing inside, but he seems like a stubborn chull with an authority problem. Not that the situation would be any different if the boy were Kelek himself.”

Dalinar entered the bedroom as inconspicuously as possible, at least until he could dress, but Jasnah turned her focus to him immediately.

“Dalinar, what do you make of this?”

“Good morning, Jasnah,” he replied, turning his back briefly as he pulled his arms into a shirt. “I’m not sure what to make of it, to be honest. The Stormfather had just confirmed the arrival of the Desolations—“

“The Desolations?!”

“Yes, we’ll cover that at the meeting - and I was pondering that on the roof when I caught them flying around Urithiru together in the middle of the night, so it wasn’t the clearest head I’ve ever had. I told them not to tell anyone, but Shallan insisted on going to you as well.”

“That was...wise of her.”

“I also...tested the ability. With Stormblessed.”

“So did I. With Davar.” For some reason, hearing that from Jasnah gave Dalinar a sense of relief. It wasn't that he had any particular feelings about kissing the bridgeman, it was just strange to have done it.

“Dalinar, you didn’t share that tidbit with me earlier!” observed Navani with a wicked smile. “Not that I’m jealous or anything.”

“Mother, please. The only ones getting a thrill from this are the bridgeman and my ward...with each other, of course.” Jasnah faltered for a second. Had something happened with Shallan this morning? And, come to think of it, why _hadn't_ he told Navani?

“But you must admit,” Navani charged on, “it’s a fascinating trait of Investiture. And it would only ever _be_ discovered through intimacy! We don’t know how it was with the last Order of Radiants, but if its military and social structures were anything like ours, romantic relations might have been so frowned upon that it was dangerous for people to share or record the discovery. And since it only works if one of the two Radiants is already holding Stormlight, there could have been thousands of kisses shared over time that didn’t produce the effect! See, this is why it hurts whole cultures when people are restricted to limited expressions of love. We could have _known_ this already - it wouldn’t have taken the romantic exploits of two 20-year olds to uncover. You have to admit, it’s a little ridiculous. We should see if there are any reports—“

“NO,” interrupted Jasnah. “No, we should not.”

Navani, irked at being interrupted mid-gallop, looked to Dalinar for validation.

“I’m sorry, gemheart,” he said, shaking his head. “The Vorin Church already views us as heretics. Our marriage was enough of a scandal. If word were to spread that Stormlight could be transferred through intimacy? It wouldn't take more than one moderately clever bard to make us out as a sex cult across Roshar. We...we can’t afford that now.”

Standing between Navani and knowledge was a dangerous thing. The look she gave him now reminded Dalinar as much. But, she let out a sigh of resignation, getting up from her seat on the bed. 

“I suppose you’re right, gemheart. For now. I’m getting dressed. You should too.” Navani’s wardrobe was kept in a small chamber just beyond their bedroom, and Dalinar knew she would be listening in on the conversation between him and her daughter. No matter, it would save him the effort of telling her everything later.


	21. Entertainment for Ivory

Jasnah

Jasnah straightened a set of spanreeds on her mother's desk as Dalinar finished putting on his uniform. “If we’ve confirmed that this ability is real, and have sworn all parties to secrecy, I suppose there’s nothing further to discuss, is there?” she asked. Jasnah found she was irritated with Shallan. She had gotten some unfavorable reports about the girl's behavior in her absence, and this morning she could barely remain focused for all of a minute. It also seemed to Jasnah that her ward had responded more...intensely than expected to the brief kiss they had exchanged. This was not a problem she was interested in having. If the Desolations were really here, there was no time for emotional nonsense.

Ivory was bent over plans for a fabrial on Navani’s desk. Just like Jasnah, the spren seemed to gravitate to desks and the papers on them - Jasnah wasn’t sure if he’d picked that up from her, or if that mutual curiosity had brought them together. The morning light through the windows gave Ivory’s surface an iridescent swirl so brilliant it was hard to see his inky black substance beneath. Jasnah felt admiration and fondness for her trailblazing spren, so thoughtful and defiant. Annoying as this business was between Shallan and the bridgeman, she supposed she could appreciate it as entertainment for Ivory.

Dalinar looked tired. Her uncle had finished dressing and looked his usual imposing, uniformed self, but there was a weariness to his eyes and a heaviness to his bearing. It was perfectly reasonable that he should be exhausted, all the time, and all things considered, he seemed to be dealing well with his role in this new world. But, though a great deal had happened since then, a part of Jasnah always saw her uncle as the roaring, exuberant man who chased her around the halls of Kholinar as a child, tossing her in the air as if she were made of feathers. It made her a little sad to see him so worn down. Storms, it almost made her wish she were small enough to be carried that way again.

“Do you think Adolin will be all right?” Dalinar muttered as he straightened his cuffs in the mirror. He seemed more puzzled than concerned.

Jasnah barely suppressed a laugh. What in creation did she possibly know about this sort of thing? “I think,” she replied, “that he will be angry, and he has every right to be. I told Shallan and the Windrunner I expected them to do their duty by him.” Whatever that could possibly be.

“So did I,” nodded Dalinar. “Adolin was a fool around girls for ages and I never said a word. It seems wrong to step in now that a girl’s been a fool around him.”

“But this time is different, though.”

“Storms, it is. Maybe it was foolish, but I liked the idea that he and Shallan could protect each other, what with the future being so...uncertain. If they break it off, every Brightlord and lady will start positioning their daughters again, as if that storming mattered right now. I just don’t have the—"

“Let’s take things one day at a time, gemheart,” Navani interrupted as she emerged from the side chamber in a scarlet havah. Jasnah saw earrings she recognized from her childhood, a gift from her father. It was hardly important, but Jasnah still found it in poor taste. “Who knows, maybe these young people will surprise us. Now, let’s get going, I want to be early for the meeting.”


	22. Chouta At Its Best

Kaladin | Lopen

“It’s fresh, gancho, this is chouta at its best,” beamed Lopen, pressing the Herdazian delicacy into Kaladin’s hand. “After a long night, this is just what a man needs to get his strength back up,” he whispered conspiratorially, adding a wink. 

Kaladin accepted the street food, attempting a laugh and unconcerned shake of the head. The specter of the lies he was going to have to tell was prematurely exhausting. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Lopen,” he protested weakly. 

“Oh yeah, me either. But I do know that my friend Kaladin in his right mind would not take a chouta from me, because of his limited palate and imagination. And look at what you hold in your hand.”

Kaladin looked down at the food he was holding, all of a sudden noticing its strong aroma and warm, squishy casing. Suppressing a gag, he handed it back to Lopen.

“Gon, you weren’t on duty last night. You haven’t been in barracks. You haven’t been at the taverns or the markets. I know of only 3 reasons a man likes to get away when everyone else is sleeping, but -” 

“Three?”

“Yeah, three. But, seeing as your powers aren’t a secret anymore and you’re too honest to do crimes, most of us are betting there is... someone special. We’re happy for you, gancho. Surprised? Also yes! But happy for you.”

At this, Kaladin noticed that Lopen’s confidential tone had been loud enough for the full barracks’ ears, and they were all definitely listening. He caught Drehy’s eye, and the bridgeman met him with a gesture somewhere between a smile and a salute. 

Syl burst out laughing, and zipped around the room as a windspren.

******

“You know we love you gon,” continued Lopen, “but we can only love you in so many ways, if you know what I mean. Skar says he can pick up your rounds this morning if you want to see whether your bed remembers you.” 

The captain opened and closed his mouth a few times, his face turning deeper and deeper shades of red the more he realized that they had an audience. He looked embarrassed and surprised, but Lopen didn’t see why he should. Bridge Four had forged itself into a family, and families looked after their own. It was actually _good_ to know that Kaladin was capable of seeking out comfort this way. Nobody should be alone like that, bearing such a burden. Everyone just hoped that whoever it was, they were doing right by their captain, or there would be storms to pay. 

“I can - Skar doesn’t - I’m fine, Lopen,” Kaladin stammered, turning red as Rock's beard. “There’s a meeting this morning that I need to attend, and it wouldn’t work to send along anyone else. The Desolations are here, you know, we can’t afford--” 

Kaladin broke off sharply. Before ducking into his room, he gave a jerky shrug, some kind of grimace on his face that must have been meant as a smirk.

“Rumors would be bad right now though, Lopen. For my reputation, that is. I don’t want nosy lighteyes in my business. Of course I don’t, I never want that, but especially now, it’s important.” 

Desperation flashed in his eyes. 

“Please, please help keep this a secret. Can I count on you?” 

What a terrible liar this young man was. He was clearly attempting some kind of swaggering air, like a bad impression of Adolin Kholin, but the Lopen would not have paid for this performance with a dun chip. There was a tone of helplessness in Kaladin’s voice, a confusion that sat poorly on his usually confident shoulders. Clearly, Kaladin Stormblessed could not even enjoy some romance without many complications. 

“You can always count on me, gon," Lopen smiled reassuringly. "And if you’ll accept some romantic advice from an expert? On your next date, maybe don’t take your friend flying in the middle of the sky where you can be seen by many. I will take care of it, though, no fear.” He held out the chouta once again, closing Kaladin’s fingers around the meal with a gentle pat on the hand. “My reputation can hold many more rumors than yours.”


	23. The Meeting

Navani | Dalinar | Jasnah | Kaladin

The sharpness with which Jasnah spoke to Shallan at the start of the meeting caught Navani by surprise. While it did make absolute sense to have a qualified member of the group take notes, rather than someone from the outside, there was something in Jasnah’s voice, a tinge of acid, that told Navani her daughter’s instructions were retribution for the morning she had endured at the hands of Davar and the Windrunner rather than any tactical consideration. 

Navani also tried not to read into the fact that her daughter and her daughter’s ward had spent a portion of that morning with their lips touching. Upon further reflection, she was beginning to draw the conclusion that this new discovery  _ was _ a tad salacious, after all.

The group gave a good show of pretending, purely for the benefit of Renarin, that absolutely nothing odd had transpired among them that morning. Not that there weren’t pressing, world-shifting matters to discuss, but Navani still found herself riveted when the discussion turned to who ought to go on the Kholinar mission. It was the kind of intrigue she generally didn’t indulge in, but storms, was it fascinating to watch her husband, her daughter, the bridgeman and the girl dance around one another. What a lucky thing that Adolin happened to be out of town. 

******

Dalinar surprised himself by suggesting that Adolin join Kaladin and Elhokar on their mission to Kholinar. While recommending otherwise would have been an obvious attempt to keep his son and the bridgeman apart, it would force the young people to come to some kind of reconciliation in a matter of weeks. In the meantime, he would have to trust the two young men not to gore each other like rutting whitespines, something he certainly could not have been expected to do at that age. 

So it was also a little surprising, and not a little worrisome, to hear Kaladin recommend that he and Adolin take the trip together, just the two of them. Had it been anyone but the bridgeman’s idea, Dalinar would be suspicious of the motive, but Stormblessed was literally Honor-bound. He could be trusted. Of course, there were other, more important reasons for insisting that Elhokar remain part of the detail, but Dalinar couldn’t help but feel grateful for a built-in chaperone, if they were to make this journey together. 

Dalinar wished, just for a moment, that he had stayed in bed last night, lulled by the sound of Navani’s pen scratching against paper and the soft tap of her safehand on the desk. He knew too well the aching, hollow feeling of spending years fighting beside the man married to your only love. He couldn’t wish that on anyone, certainly not his own son. Or the bridgeman, for that matter. Kelek send they would live long enough to get over it, not that he had.

Dalinar found himself inordinately grateful to Jasnah for calling a break. He needed a drink.

******

“I’ll do what is right, regardless of my feelings, sir. And...I might be beyond those feelings anyway, now.”

The bridgeman’s words were spoken in reference to his history with Elhokar, but a tense silence followed. Shallan’s eyes shot up from her sketchpad, which everyone - even Renarin, curiously - seemed to notice, because they had all looked over to see how she would react. 

“This is too small,” Jasnah found herself blurting out, both because it was true and because she was appalled that the conversation seemed to be contorting into some weird metaphor for the romantic entanglement between the Windrunner and her ward. 

Something about this dalliance made Jasnah feel wicked and petty. The girl had grown daring in her absence, which was both a natural result of coming into her powers and incredibly, incredibly annoying. And anyway, they were dealing with evil immortal spren . It was insulting to posit that anything could take precedence over dealing with that threat, never mind some emotions run rampant between two teenagers.

While it would be torture to hone Shallan into the Radiant they needed, especially given the complications with Adolin, Jasnah determined that it was also necessary. That meant reminding Shallan of the responsibilities of her wardship, and guiding her towards wiser choices. The girl seemed to take every chance to mix herself up in bad business, so unfortunately it was riskier to leave her to her own devices than it was tiresome to correct her behavior. 

On the other hand, she was starting to appreciate qualities of the bridgeman that were not readily apparent earlier in the morning. Clearly a respected and disciplined leader, the Windrunner also exhibited a sense of justice and moral strength that was refreshing to see in an Alethi gathering. Despite an obvious lack of tactical knowledge and a tendency toward sentimentality, it was plain that no one would buy this man’s loyalty, or weaken his convictions with promotions and promises. 

And storms, was the young bridgeman easy to bait. He flustered faster than he could fly, which Jasnah had to admit she enjoyed. What she did not enjoy was the complete lack of minutes for the first half of this meeting. 

******

“I’ll do what is right, regardless of my feelings, sir. And...I might be beyond those feelings anyway, now.”

Kaladin felt Shallan’s eyes suddenly on him. He didn’t mean _ those _ feelings. Did he? Why had he said it that way?

Storms, WHY did he need Dalinar’s approval so badly? Around the highprince, Kaladin felt the ghost of what he had felt around his own father - the need for and expectation of approval, the desire to protect him, to prove that he was strong and capable. It was an odd feeling to see Dalinar again, smooth-cheeked in a fresh uniform, and Kaladin felt almost grateful to Jasnah for baiting him with her genocidal rhetoric over the course of the meeting. Snapping at her was a distraction both from the sight of Shallan and from the recollection of his early morning encounter with the highprince. Storms, these past few days had been more disorienting than the chasms themselves.

It felt like being an actor in a terrible play. Here he was, steps away from Shallan, Dalinar and Jasnah, all jointly pretending that absolutely nothing had transpired between them mere hours earlier, all for the benefit of Renarin Kholin. And, probably, themselves. 

Alethi society was constantly roiling with scandal under its courtly exterior - deception, insults disguised as flattery, betrayals played off as politics. All that lighteyes nonsense had always infuriated him, and for the first time, Kaladin himself was part of that drama. Not only did it feel hypocritical and bad, it was exhausting. 

This was all aside from the reality that there were other, bigger problems to tackle just now -- several in fact. Soon he would leave for Kholinar, with storming Adolin, and who knows if any of them would return? The Desolations were here - that is literally what they had all met this morning to discuss. He couldn’t - wouldn’t - keep spending all his energy to maintain a charade. 

It would be better to call things with Shallan off now. Storms, hadn’t they already agreed to that this morning? Or last night? It was so hard to keep track of things, these past few days. He stole a glance at her, slouched petulantly in the corner, clearly not taking the notes she’d been instructed to take. She seemed smaller just then, younger maybe. It was as if being around Jasnah made her play the part of a mousy ward, just as he was glowering cross-armed in the corner, always the stoic soldier. And Kaladin happened to know exactly what he looked like just then, because as Shallan’s pencil flew absentmindedly over the page, she created the form of...well, him. 

Following his eyes, Syl zipped over to Shallan’s sketchpad, making exaggerated gestures of approval as a creationspren burst into being nearby.


	24. After The Meeting

Jasnah | Veil

Jasnah knew in advance that there wouldn’t be adequate notes for the meeting. Thankfully, Ivory found human discussions fascinating, especially arguments, so he could be counted on to help Jasnah recollect what was missing, both today and in the future. It was going to be tiresome setting up scenarios where Shallan would fail, then act disappointed at the shortcomings, but it also seemed to be working. Though the girl had the gall to actually draw _the bridgeman_ instead of recording minutes, she was sufficiently chastened by the time the meeting reconvened, not looking at or speaking to him for the rest of the meeting. The young man seemed a little disappointed by that.

There was something about Shallan’s behavior that bothered Jasnah, though. It was hard to place at first, as she had seldom experienced or witnessed it, but then she finally landed on it: Shallan had a crush on her. 

“Jasnah, this sounds dangerous,” Ivory warned when Jasnah gave the sensation a name back in her rooms. “Shallan is breaking you physically? Yet she is not strong enough for it to be!”

Jasnah smiled as she eased off her shoes, enjoying the cool stone floor through her stockings. “You see how many humans desire close companionship?”

“Yes, of course. Just as we.”

“No - well, yes,” Jasnah conceded, “In a way, yes. But very often humans encounter emotions before these companionships begin. They don’t always match with one another, and one person may desire companionship that the other does not. The feeling can be very strong, or start small and then fade, or many other permutations thereof. Shallan is having this small emotion for me, just as she and the bridgeman are having a large emotion for one another.”

Jasnah checked the lights on each spanreed on her desk as Ivory took a size large enough to sit in Jasnah’s chair and rest his elbows on her desk, hands cradling his chin. Jasnah found she tended to lecture more and more, as Ivory truly enjoyed it. There was no more attentive student on all of Roshar. 

“Physical contact can often enhance these feelings,” Jasnah continued, angling the mirror on the wardrobe toward her and pinning back some stray hairs, “even if a human understands it is not desirable or practical to pursue companionship with the other person. I worry that our kiss earlier this morning may have elicited...a response in Shallan, which I was not anticipating. 

“Of course she knows just as we do that I do not carry this feeling for her, but as my ward has shown in her recent past, this will not likely stop her from indulging in these emotions. On the one hand, she will want to please me, which could produce favorable outcomes in terms of our work. But on the other hand, I now hold an inappropriate level of power over my ward, which presents a risk.”

“What is the risk?” asked Ivory. “Will you crush Shallan?”

“I hope not,” Jasnah sighed, reapplying some color to her lips and dusting her nose and brow lightly with powder. “Come on, let’s go see if my mother’s ardents have cracked the Dawnchant yet.”

Ivory reduced himself in size and accepted a lift from Jasnah’s desk to her shoulder. Sliding back into her shoes, Jasnah checked the spanreeds one last time before locking the door behind her.

******

Veil caught herself daydreaming about the bridgeman as she played Questions, Peeks and Inferences with the boys. She had an unfair advantage in the game, Shallan’s memory being what it was, and as the men yammered on, Veil’s mind kept returning to the moment she had manifested midair in Kaladin’s arms, rescuing Shallan once again from her own uncertainties. What a hunger she felt for the brooding spearman, even as she dissipated along with the Stormlight he pulled from Shallan’s body. The sensation had stunned Veil, scared her a little, but the element of danger only made her want to do it again. There was something powerfully alluring about a person who could consume you, _ingest_ you like that. She could literally lose herself in a kiss, how storming poetic. 

Of course it was still an unfortunate distraction. Shallan had been successful so far in keeping her involvement with the Ghostbloods a secret, but it would only get more complicated as her relationships developed. Veil could see that the link between Shallan and Kaladin wasn’t about to be broken, but how would he respond to her being in league with the Ghostbloods? Adolin would never suspect it - he was too ready to accept whatever version of herself Shallan put forward - but Kaladin, Kaladin might. And he would certainly have opinions about it. As much as Veil wanted more chances to steal away with the brooding darkeyed Windrunner, maybe find out how things looked under that uniform, it would only cause more trouble. What a bother.

Veil flipped her winning tiles, letting the disappointed groans of Vathah and Gaz take her mind off the problem, for now.


	25. You Owe Him That

Shallan

Shallan caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she finished buttoning her safehand sleeve, out of Veil’s costume for the day. What would it look like if she did an illusion the old-fashioned way, with paint and powder? She burned a little Stormlight, trying different colors on her lips and eyes.

“Shallan, are you redecorating your face?” Pattern wanted to know.

“You know how Jasnah does her makeup? I’m trying to see if I can get it like that,” Shallan explained, attempting to make one part of her eyelid darker than another, the way she remembered seeing on the older woman. 

Of course, she had never drawn or imagined herself this way, so it came out looking less “refined brightlady” and more “axehound breaking into a paintbox.” Shallan cycled through several shades of lipcolor, none of which suited her freckly pale face the way they did Jasnah’s evenly tan complexion. As she did so, she realized she was thinking about Jasnah’s lips in a much different way.

Storms. The kiss had been research, just research. Shallan _knew_ that. There was only one way to learn about the weird fact of Stormlight she and Kaladin had discovered, and they did that, and that was the right thing to do. Wasn’t it? But then...she’d missed 15 minutes of the meeting that morning just...daydreaming about Jasnah. Her face, her curves, her hands... _storms_. She’d been busted by Jasnah herself _that morning_ for not paying attention in the aftermath of that brief kiss. 

It was enough just figuring out what to do about Kaladin. This too? 

Someone knocked on Shallan’s doorway. 

“Shallan? It’s me, can I come in?”

Shallan’s heart froze. Adolin sounded...sad. That was unusual. Storms, did he know? Pattern hummed from a spot on the wall. 

“Of course!” Shallan shouted, too loudly for the size of the room. She wished she had been in a state of undress, or still disguised as Veil, something that would allow her to stall for a moment, but all she had to do was drop the bad paint job off her face. Hastily, she grabbed a sheaf of papers, feigning concentration. He was supposed to be in Vedenar! How were they already back? 

“Um, come in!”

Adolin ducked through the doorway, though he wasn't so tall that he actually needed to. At the sight of Shallan he visibly relaxed, then hesitated. He took a seat the wrong way on a chair, gazing dreamily at her.

"You look busy.”

“Oh, oh no, not really,” Shallan shoved the pages back onto her desk, practically pushing them onto the floor. The thought of meeting that gaze nauseated her. Storms, she was drawing shamespren! She pulled in Stormlight to steady herself and summoned Radiant, who would absolutely know what to do. Curiously, Radiant...resisted? But she _was_ Radiant. Or, Radiant was _her_. Shallan tried again, forming the Lightweaving around herself, but the confidence she was groping for, the _propriety_ of Radiant, was nowhere to be found. Frustrated, Shallan cursed under her breath, then gave up on the transformation, attempting a casual lean against the wall of the room, but it felt ridiculous and wrong. She looked guiltily at Adolin, whose gaze had gone from dreamy to puzzled.

“Shallan, are you all right?”

“Shallan, your illusion is very bad,” Pattern quietly buzzed from behind her collar, “Are you having a problem?”

“Yes - _I mean no!_ \- I mean, yes, I’m all right, Adolin. Why do you ask?”

Adolin cocked his head. He opened his mouth to say something, then changed his mind. “I guess you know I’m going on this mission to Kholinar,” he proceeded, scrutinizing her with those gorgeous eyes. Oblivious as he could be, Shallan was acting odd enough for even Adolin to notice. Storms, that was bad. 

“I mean, of course you know, you were there when they decided. I just...I just wanted to talk to you about it. I might be gone a long time, and it’ll be dangerous, so I, um--”

“Adolin?” It was the most difficult word she’d ever uttered. It felt like a knife had neatly carved away a piece of her heart and tossed it to the wind. Adolin stopped, full on his guard.

Shallan met that perfect blue gaze. “I need to tell you something.”

Adolin simply waited. No 'go on,' no 'what is it,' no 'please continue.' He just sat patiently, attentively, as if she were reading him a book. 

_We have to tell him,_ urged Radiant from wherever she was hiding. _Just say it, you owe him that._

So Shallan told him. 


	26. That Makes Sense

Shallan | Adolin

“I kissed Kaladin.”

What an understatement! Why did she say it like that?!

The look on Adolin’s face felt like two great hands, ripping her apart at the shoulders. In all the short time they had known one another, Shallan had never seen Adolin this way. It was almost as if his face didn’t know what _do_ just then, expression shifting between hurt and confusion. Shallan cursed herself for being the one to make him feel this way, cursed every choice that had brought them to this moment.

“You what?”

“I-”

“Shallan, you what?”

She couldn’t answer. 

"Why?”

_What a good question,_ observed Radiant. Was she taking Adolin’s side?? But she was Radiant! Radiant was her! Could she _do_ that to herself?

“Well technically he kissed me,” sputtered Shallan, “But then I kissed back, so…” 

“Damnation, Shallan! Why?”

Adolin grew suddenly still, his voice level and low. While Shallan knew with certainty that he would never lay a hand on her, there was something about the way he stood that unnerved her. The lean muscle, the duelist’s poise, all the things she usually swooned over took on a different cast as he carefully restrained whatever impulse passed through his mind. For the first time, Shallan saw the killer in Adolin Kholin. 

“I-“

Abruptly, Adolin strode over to a wall of her room, leaning on it in a casual manner. When he looked back at Shallan, it was a friendly mask, the kind of pleasant non-smile that a young Alethi brightlord would have perfected years since. Somehow, this was even more unnerving. 

“Really, I want to know. There seems to be a lot I’m not aware of. Can you explain it to me?”

******

When Shallan confessed her infidelity, the first thing Adolin thought was “that makes sense,” because it did. Shallan was a Radiant. Bridgeboy was too. It was the exact thing he’d tried to bring up with her before! This was a new world, she was a hero of myth and legend. It was reasonable to wonder whether she wanted to move forward with the betrothal, which was _why he had asked_. She could’ve taken the opportunity to break it off then, let them end it on friendly, honest terms. But instead, she’d met Adolin's fears with assurances, affection. It made him feel safe from a hurt that he was very afraid to feel.

That was all before bridgeboy came home, though. Brooding, righteous, Radiant, gorgeous storming bridgeboy. Who could compete with that? 

Given how obvious it all was, demanding an explanation from Shallan felt kind of cruel, like exposing your breastplate in a feint to goad the enemy into close range. He hoped - expected - that making Shallan say it out loud would be a dagger in her own side. 

Storms, this was horrible.

“I...I didn’t know it was going to…”

Shamespren exploded around Shallan, drifting to the ground in a flurry of petals. 

“I didn’t realize I missed him until he was back! I wanted to meet, but I didn’t want people whispering about it, didn’t want to have to explain to anyone. It wasn’t exactly meant to turn out like it did, but it probably _was_ , but I didn’t know how _he_ felt before we - before that time. And then it turned out to be a lot, a lot more than we realized, but there wasn’t a chance to _stop_ before - before...Adolin, what are you doing?”

Adolin realized he was reaching for his Shardblade, his racing heart already at 5 beats. He cancelled the summon with a wrenching sensation that felt like falling down a chasm.

Horrified, he left the room in silence.


	27. The Charming Idiot

Adolin

Adolin hoped he would escape Sebarial’s quarter without passing the highprince himself or his mistress, but unfortunately Palona was reclining in their comically large sitting area, so covered in throws and so lazily still that Adolin didn’t see her until too late. 

“That was a short visit,” the petite woman observed, not bothering to look up from her folio. “I hope you didn’t make her too angry, apparently she’s learning how to use a sword.”

A surge of nausea overwhelmed Adolin. The room threatened to spin, the strata of the walls blurring before his eyes. _Get it together,_ he coached himself, _you’re almost free, just focus on the exit. Play dumb. Play the charming idiot._ He fixed a baffled look on Palona, then let a wide-eyed look of realization spread across his face. 

“Oh! That’s _me_! _I’m_ the one teaching her! Oh, that’s a good one!” Adolin laughed. He laughed with the closest approximation of good humor and joy he could muster, but it was clear from Palona’s reaction that he looked like a madman. Striding out of the room at top speed, Adolin threw in one last, hopefully less crazy-sounding chuckle that would echo in the hall as he raced away, not in any particular direction. Just away.

He’d almost drawn his _Shardblade_ at Shallan! What in Damnation? But Adolin was sure he didn’t want to hurt her, and of course he didn’t feel threatened by Shallan, either. Or did he? She _had_ brought one of his fears to life, wasn’t that the definition of scary? Storms, _was_ he afraid of her? He figured she might be afraid of him now.

It had been a panicked response, like a child grasping at a doll or a parent’s sleeve. Adolin couldn’t recall ever feeling the awful sensation that came when he’d stopped summoning his Blade just then, but he also couldn’t remember ever wanting to have it in his hands and then suddenly...not wanting it. Not only that, _needing_ it not to come. Adolin suddenly recalled the fright in Shallan’s eyes as she noticed his outstretched hand. The floor heaved beneath his feet, and he broke into a run.

Adolin continued charging ahead, ducking down whichever hallway seemed less likely to contain people. That performance in front of Palona had been excruciating, and Adolin genuinely doubted he could pull it off again. The only person he could think of to talk to about this was Renarin. Who would be with Bridge 4. Storming. Fucking. Bridgeboy. 

Before long, Adolin caught the tickle of fresh air coming from someplace ahead, cooling the sweat that had broken out across his brow. Sprinting now, he eventually found himself washed in bright afternoon sun on a balcony strewn with dun spheres. Sinking to his knees, Adolin stretched out his hand until, ten heartbeats later, the weight of his Blade filled his palm. Then, calmly, he rose with Blade in hand, walked to the ledge, and vomited off the side.


	28. Fight?

Shallan

Shallan was positive Adolin wouldn’t hurt her, knew it in her very soul, but she was still scared to follow him out of her room. 

_Go after him,_ Radiant urged. _That was barely a conversation, you barely made any sense! Tell him you’re sorry!_ Don’t _let him leave!_

She heard Adolin’s laugh echoing down the hall. It was not...a happy laugh. Storms, he had scared her, and not because he had summoned his Blade. It was the way he seemed to have become different people, none of them recognizable, all of them competing for control of his actions. 

Shallan had to pause for a moment to consider the irony of this. 

“Shallan,” Pattern buzzed from the wall beside her, “was this different from your plans?”

Plans. That was funny. 

There had been no plan to tell Adolin, none whatsoever. After the meeting, she had sent the map of the balcony back to Kaladin’s quarters, tucked inside a map of Kholinar. Tonight, she figured, they could see each other and work it out together. But also... maybe they could do some other stuff, too. That was her whole plan, which is to say there was no plan. 

“I didn’t have a plan, Pattern,” Shallan moaned. “I was just kind of hoping it would all be fine, even though there was absolutely no chance.”

“It was a very good lie,” Pattern praised her. 

She hadn’t considered that Adolin would have returned from Jah Keved so soon, or that daydreaming about _Jasnah_ of all people would have had her so off-guard when he came to visit. But aside from all that, Shallan was terrified to consider what might happen when he found out. And she was deeply ashamed of having gone behind his back, though it had seemed very worth it at the time. Storms, it _was_ worth it! Wasn’t it?

“And _you_ ,” Shallan growled at Radiant. Herself? Storms, this was not a good sign. “Where were you? I _need_ you around Adolin! That’s...that’s where you came from!”

_You shouldn’t have let him leave,_ Radiant insisted. Was that...anger? Storms, how did someone so judgmental live in her own head?

There was a knock at the door. 

He was back!

“Oh storms, I’m so sorry,” Shallan scrambled to her feet, scrubbing the tears off her face with her safehand, “Adolin, I —“

Palona was standing on the other side of the curtain, holding two glasses and a bottle of violet. 

“Fight?” the older woman asked, clearly believing she knew the answer. Which, in a way, she did.

Shallan hesitated in the doorway. Palona could _not_ be trusted with this. Storms, her whole _day_ was learning everyone’s business, everywhere, and turning it to her and Sebarial’s advantage whenever she could. Shallan respected Palona, liked her too, but the woman couldn’t be allowed to walk away with an inkling of what was really going on. 

“Shallan, I saw Adolin on his way out,” Palona said. “Poor boy was a storming mess, and frankly you are too.” She held out the glasses. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Shallan nodded numbly, making way for Palona to enter. Time to lie her storming face off.

The two women sat on Shallan’s floor, which Palona initiated for some reason. Shallan toasted with her, and they drank. 

“So what did he do?” The other woman asked. “Or what did _you_ do?”

Shallan tried to hide her surprise. Palona wasn’t wasting any time. Think, think: what stupid thing would two betrothed lighteyes fight about?

“I...saw Janala talking with him yesterday,” Shallan responded, with all the bitterness she could muster. “And I got jealous.”


	29. It's Him or Me

Adolin

_It’s him or me._

Adolin could still see in his mind the ruddy face of Torol Sadeas, moments before the knife slid through his eye socket and ended his life. Famously cutthroat and merciless, the highprince had spent years working to discredit - storms - _eliminate_ his father. _It’s him or me._ No room for alliances, no chance for unity, no place for trust. The old man had expressed it easy as breathing, as if it were part of the natural order. So Adolin had made the choice Dalinar couldn’t: he eliminated Sadeas. And nobody could ever know.

Adolin's blade rested lengthwise across the stone ledge running waist-high around the balcony. There was something peaceful, almost sacred, about the remote spot, something mysterious and frivolous about the wealth of gemstones scattered across the ground, unclaimed. The sounds and smells of the markets and the barracks were absent here. There was no scurry of ardents, no family to scrutinize him or ask what was wrong, no storming Bridge Four detail, no bridgeboy. And no Shallan. The thought of her twisted in his gut.

“She kissed him!” he cried at the sword, “When did she do that? WHY did she do that? And...why did she TELL me??” 

If he could keep quiet about his own crimes, why in Damnation couldn’t she? Adolin wished he didn’t know about any of it. He wouldn’t have to care if he didn’t know. He would be a fool, sure, but anything seemed better than this feeling of betrayal, of helplessness. He loved Shallan. He wanted to marry her. He also wanted to break something, to fight someone, but what was he going to do? He could never hurt her. He never wanted to see her hurt, even if she _could_ heal herself. 

“Because she’s magic. She’s magic! THEY’RE magic.” Adolin picked up his blade and started tossing spheres in the air, smacking them out into nothingness. It felt good to swing the blade, to _connect_ with something solid. Adolin looked over the balcony once or twice to make sure no one was directly below, and all seemed clear, except for the very gross splatter of his own sickness. 

“The whole storming REASON I went to see her was that I was going to MISS her on this stupid mission to Kholinar! I could storming DIE over there! And instead it’s ‘I kissed Kaladin’?” Adolin demanded of the Blade as it whooshed in the air. 

“I don’t CARE about him. I care about US. I thought SHE cared about us. She storming said she did.” Adolin fell silent as the repetitive motion calmed his nerves and stilled his mind. A few times he tried to slice a sphere midair, with mixed success. Glass and gemstones clattered dully to the stone floor, then he picked them up and swung at them again.

Adolin wanted to fight someone. He wouldn’t fight Shallan, but there was another option. After he had cleared the floor of all its riches, he carefully felt his way back to civilization and went to find a messenger.


	30. Stonestance

Adolin | Kaladin

Adolin took Stonestance. 

It wasn’t comfortable to him, lacking the fluid motion of Windstance, obliging him to remain grounded and immobile. But now, he wanted his feet planted. He wanted powerful cuts and grinding parries. He wanted his opponent to feel like an intruder on his territory, because he was. 

Storms, he hated this. 

The bridgeman hung back warily, Shardspear tucked lightly under one arm. His eyes, usually dark as chasms, shone bright blue, complementing the Bridge Four uniform which fell easily across his frame, as if honored to be his clothes. Though Kaladin tied back his hair to spar, several locks had already come loose to fall along his temples. Storming man was perfect. Of course Shallan wanted him. Adolin practically did. He...he found he actually kind of did? Fascinating. Adolin shrugged off the sensation. It wouldn’t help now.

He was relieved that Kaladin had agreed to meet on the practice grounds; it wouldn’t look unusual for the two of them to spar, and this way they could avoid the torture of standing around in a room somewhere just talking about it.

_So, bridgeboy, I hear you met with my betrothed in secret and you made out a bunch._

_That’s right._

_How interesting. Please allow me to stab you through the eye, I have had practice._

That wouldn’t be good. 

“Are you two planning to dance around each other all day?” Zahel called from somewhere. “This is the practice ground, we spar here. Two trees can’t - ah, never mind. Get moving!”

Kaladin had clearly been expecting Adolin to take Windstance, and was keeping his own stance close in anticipation of a sweeping attack. Once he realized those blows weren’t coming, he dashed forward, launching himself into a leap that went too high and traveled too far to be anything but a Lashing. Even with the help of Shardplate, Adolin had never seen a human move like that. It was breathtaking.

Adolin felt the full contact of his feet on the sand, level and steady. So Stormblessed had the skies. He would try to have the earth. 

******

Kaladin kept his eyes trained on Adolin, who held his blade overhead as he soared past. Syl had begrudgingly agreed to wear a protective covering on her speartip, even though she thought it looked stupid. They had decided it would be an unfair advantage for her to change forms in this fight - no shields, no swords, just the spear. 

The prince was favoring Stonestance, one he almost never used. Kaladin recognized its strong pose immediately, recalling how it worked - powerful blows on offense and a defense that relied on keeping oneself grounded, blocking strikes with the sword. A heavy, strong stance. Kaladin would have the speed to dodge those blows, but in order to get a hit he would have to get in close and strike inside the Blade’s reach, otherwise he’d be beaten away. 

Kaladin landed behind Adolin and the reach of his blade, hoping it would take the prince a moment to reorient and give him an opening. But Adolin had already knelt in a crouch, and now burst towards Kaladin in a leap, Blade plummeting towards him in a vicious downward strike. Even without the assistance of Plate he managed to jump an impressive distance, and Kaladin had to fling himself out of the way. 

Adolin was the best duelist in Alethkar, with a mesmerizing confidence and grace. Today, though, he reminded Kaladin of Dalinar. Solid. Direct. Immutable. Adolin seemed to smolder, coiled tight like a whitespine before the kill. Absent was the easy air of privilege, the perpetual good humor. It was unnerving. 

Kaladin had never truly been the target before, not in this way. His mission was to protect, protect at all costs. He’d sworn it to the Stormfather himself, had made it his only purpose in life. _Protect those who cannot protect themselves, protect even those I hate_. Every minute he spent in combat had been as the soldier or the bodyguard, never the true opponent. Until now. Adolin needed to meet _him_ here, had all but challenged him to the dreaded duel. Kaladin was defending only himself, and he barely even wanted to. 

He regained his footing just in time to parry another blow, the shaft of the Sylspear vibrating at the impact.

Adolin drove down with his Shardblade, meeting Kaladin’s eyes with a chilly determination he had never seen. 

Through gritted teeth he said, “I love her, did you know that?”

******

A look of sadness flashed across Kaladin’s face. Adolin had never before been in a duel where both people were so unhappy to be fighting one another. Involuntarily, he recalled how the two of them had fought side by side in the dueling arena, which then forced him to remember how he’d incarcerated himself in solidarity with the man who was now apparently Shallan’s lover. A fresh wave of betrayal washed over Adolin at the thought. 

The ground pushed against Adolin’s planted feet, carrying power through his legs, abdomen, shoulders, arms and Blade as it bore down on Kaladin. It was nothing magical, no surge of power, just a connectedness and weight that reassured him, gave him strength, reminded him that he existed. He would grind Kaladin to dust if he could.

“She loves you too,” grunted Kaladin he was slowly pushed into the ground. Adolin was sure he could have disengaged, leapt or Lashed back, but he didn’t. “She doesn’t want - we don’t want -” 

“NO,” bellowed Adolin, landing a knee in Kaladin’s gut, forcing him to kneel, “There is no WE, bridgeboy!” he grunted, “There is none.” 

Adolin quickly dismissed his Blade as he toppled them both, feet sliding out from under him as he pressed hard against Kaladin’s spear to regain his footing. For a second, he was back under Urithiru in a frantic scrabble with Sadeas. Furious, vicious. A murderer. 

_It’s him or me._

No, no no no. It shouldn’t _be_ like that!

“NO!” Adolin shouted again. Dismissing his Blade, Adolin pushed against the haft of the spear, flinging himself away. Kaladin swung out, hitting him on the temple with the butt of the weapon as he sprung back to his feet. Adolin wavered, acting more dazed than he felt. He remained on his knees, one hand lightly touching the place the spear had struck. Part of him wanted to lunge at the bridgeman, crush his Windrunning windpipe right there (which of course he could storming _heal_ ) but a larger part of him was disgusted by that thought. That wasn’t him. It _wasn’t_. He wouldn’t let it be.

******

_Get up,_ thought Kaladin as loudly as he could. _Get up._ Adolin had obviously thought that meeting on the practice grounds would make for an unremarkable encounter, but the fact was that eyes would be on them wherever they met. They would have to make a good show of it now, or everyone would notice something was amiss, such as the most easygoing and good-natured lighteyes in history suddenly possessed by a terrifying rage, for example. Adolin made no sign of rising. _Get up._

“Come on, your highness,” Kaladin tried in the most gamesman-like voice he could muster, “no need to go easy on me.” With a gesture that he hoped looked more confident and friendly than he felt, Kaladin stepped forward with a hand outstretched. Adolin’s eyes darted up at him, and Kaladin felt...danger. Before he could articulate the feeling, the other man’s face configured itself into a smile, gaze turning to the ground.

“You really got me, bridgeboy!” Adolin lied, accepting the hand up. Kaladin had given him nothing more than a light tap, and they both knew it, but apparently that was enough to signal the end of the spar. Still grasping Kaladin’s hand, Adolin clapped him on the shoulder, giving every impression of a friendly bout amicably ended. Storms, when had every minute of his life become a pantomime? 

“I’d like to talk with you,” Adolin murmured, using the gesture as an opportunity to lower his voice. He really was an expert at this game. “Someplace less...public.”

Adolin released his grasp and pulled back, whacking the dust off his uniform and tugging at his coat. “Can you take a walk?”

There was something about the way Adolin was _not_ meeting his eyes, the nonchalance laid on so thick he could almost taste it, that set off alarm bells in Kaladin’s mind. Syl swooped around Adolin as a windspren, coaxing the dust into little swirls around his shoulders and knees. 

“I don’t think I like this, Kaladin,” Syl mused, “but you could take him if you had to, anyway.”

Kaladin glanced around the practice grounds. They _had_ turned some heads earlier, but now everyone seemed to be back to their business. Zahel looked like he had fallen asleep in his chair, a book propped open on his face.

“Sure,” Kaladin replied warily, “I can take a walk.”

Together, they walked off the grounds.


	31. A Walk

Adolin | Kaladin

Adolin spared no detail of his visit to Vedenar as he led Kaladin through the streets of Urithiru. He could talk endlessly, and did so. No leaving room for meaningful silences, no opportunity for bridgeboy to excuse himself. Just keep talking, keep walking. The wariness radiated off the other man like Stormlight, but he kept pace and stayed quiet. Good.

He told Kaladin what Malata was wearing that day on the Oathgate platform, how Elhokar had responded to the wreckage in Jah Keved, what a clever scribe had commented on when they arrived, what _she_ was wearing, the weird way one of the soldiers saluted, every single detail he could possibly think of. 

As they entered the markets of Sebarial’s quarter, Adolin could sense the tension in Kaladin’s gait, as if realizing too late that he had walked into a trap. Shallan lived here, after all. 

“Easy, bridgeboy,” Adolin said, pausing his thorough rundown of the condition of the boots of the Veden officers, “we’re not going where you think we’re going. Anyway, there was this one guy who is _clearly_ a sworn enemy of the quartermaster, because…”

******

“He just keeps talking, Kaladin. Do some humans not need to breathe?” 

Syl had been utterly captivated by Adolin’s nonstop patter which, Kaladin had to admit, was truly impressive. The first minutes after they exited the practice grounds he had tried to act genuinely engaged in what the prince was saying, giving a distracted nod to Skar and Lopen as they made their rounds. But Adolin’s pace steadily increased as they walked, and Kaladin eventually had to focus on keeping pace with the taller man. 

As the prince’s monologue got more and more absurd, Kaladin’s thoughts drifted to Shallan, who he still hadn’t seen since the meeting that morning, scurrying off under Jasnah’s orders. There was still so much they needed to talk about, so much that had happened. He wasn’t sure where exactly they had ended things, for one thing. Were they still calling it off? Were they not? What had Shallan meant blurting out Palona’s name this morning? 

Storms, he wanted to see Shallan, to hold her, taste her, _be_ with her. His heart leapt just thinking of the possibility that he could have that again. 

But, desperate as Kaladin was to experience the exhilaration that was being with Shallan, he wasn’t ready for people to know about it. And Adolin already knew. And they were going to go talk about it. He wasn’t ready for that, either.

Adolin’s prattle generously allowed for a certain amount of privacy as the two of them walked, endlessly it seemed. Kaladin wasn’t paying attention to where they were going until they had already entered Little Herdaz, in the heart of Sebarial’s holdings.

For a second, Kaladin thought he caught a flash of red hair in the distance. He slowed for a second, searching for Shallan’s face, but what would he do if he saw her now, anyway? Call out to her, like some lovesick knight from the songs? 

“Easy, bridgeboy,” Adolin paused his ramblings with a soothing voice Kaladin had heard him use on his horse. “We’re not going where you think we’re going.” 

Stepping behind a row of vendor stalls, Adolin veered down a narrow corridor, apparently unused and unnoticed by the public. He pulled a few spheres from his pocket to light the way and stepped ahead of Kaladin, the width of the tunnel forcing them to walk single file.

“Kaladin,” Syl whispered as she floated beside him.“If I was going to lead someone to the scene of their own murder? This is how that walk would start.”

All of a sudden Kaladin remembered the look that flashed in Adolin’s eyes after their sorry excuse for a spar. _Danger_. Kaladin reached out and grabbed Adolin’s arm above the elbow, jerking them both to a halt. 

“This seems private enough, princeling,” Kaladin used his most reasonable soldier-sounding voice. “Why don’t you just tell me what you want to tell me.”

******

Kaladin was clearly running out of patience after their scenic walk together. Adolin could practically feel bridgeboy’s fingerprints as he yanked at his arm. 

Kaladin’s return to his usual confrontational self actually gave Adolin a boost of confidence. Only one of them had kissed the other’s betrothed after all, and Adolin was comfortably on the moral high ground. If Kaladin wanted to get angry, Adolin would be perfectly, infuriatingly friendly. This seemed like a manageable dynamic, something he could control. Storms, that felt good. He pried Kaladin’s fingers off his arm with a mischievous grin.

“We’re not there _yet_ , bridgeboy! This tunnel has no atmosphere! Come on, I really want to show this place to someone, it’s not too far. All done talking about the boots now, I promise.” 

He charged ahead in silence, hoping the other man would follow. After a petulant groan, he did. 

As they walked, a sharp feeling of anticipation rose in Adolin’s chest. He had been so focused on getting them away from the public eye that he hadn’t actually thought about what he would say or do. Storms, this is exactly what he’d been hoping to avoid with the stupid spar in the first place! What were they going to do? And why did Adolin need them to do it on that balcony? 

Adolin realized that he was playing with the handle of the knife sheathed at his waist. He jerked his hand way, quickening the pace. 

_It’s him or me._

_It doesn’t have to be that way._

Storms, it _couldn’t_ be that way. What was he going to do, murder a Knight Radiant at the onset of the Desolations because of his _feelings_? Pending apocalypse aside, Adolin still didn’t feel the need to eliminate Kaladin. He was a human being, not a whitespine. He could handle this. Somehow. Two pairs of boots echoed as they walked quietly along, the spheres in Adolin’s palm throwing shadows across the strata. 

It was easy navigating the twisting passages, which he’d marked with chalk on his way out. Eventually, the gentle stream of fresh air broadened to a cool breeze, and Adolin found himself back on the balcony again, looking out on the world. 

“No,” he heard Kaladin say from behind him, “no, this is impossible.”

Kaladin emerged into the late afternoon sun, the angles of his face glinting with a golden glow as if he were one of the Heralds. It was honestly enough to make you punch a man. He turned to Adolin in bewilderment. 

“How did you know?”


	32. A Good Deal

Shallan

Shallan sold her story to Palona with some self-righteous ranting and eventually repentant tears, swearing she would give anything to get Adolin back again. The lies felt good, soothing, giving her somewhere to put the frustration and regrets. It was like placing a Lightweaving over her own reality - a cleaner, easier lie to obscure the jagged, uncomfortable truth.

It also seemed to be all that Palona was expecting to hear, so she readily accepted the whole story.

“I won’t say men are all the same, Shallan, but most men are fools in the same ways,” Palona intoned sagely, draining her glass. “He’ll come around, don’t worry.”

Shallan had been quietly using Stormlight to burn off some of the alcohol as they went, but of course Palona couldn’t do the same. And the woman was now pretty drunk. 

“Does...Sebarial ever do that to you, Palona?”

“Do what?” Palona demanded. “Flirt with other women? Oh, no. My Turi knows when he has a good deal. He has a good deal.” 

Palona reached for the bottle, refilling her cup and topping off Shallan’s.

“You know about his sister, though? Mirinal?" She leaned in conspiratorially. "Poor thing does _not_ have a good deal. She’s the one who runs the estate on Alethkar, you know. Smart like her brother. Married an absolute lavis polyp for his money, and they have three very average children together. Her husband doesn’t cheat - I would know if he was cheating - so that’s not bad...” 

Shallan’s neck stiffened at the word “cheat.” What a horrible word. She had never thought of it - her and Kaladin - like that, _cheating_ , but of course anyone else would. Storms, Adolin probably did. Was that her? A cheater?

“... the Vorin ideal?” Palona rambled on, not noticing Shallan’s wandering thoughts.

“Rich and pious and popping out future warriors? Storms yes. Is she happy? I don’t know. But this is not a good deal, Shallan,” Palona warned, jabbing her finger in the air for emphasis. “With these Alethis, they marry for leverage instead of love. I’m sure you’ve seen that - constantly positioning themselves, sizing each other up, deciding who gets the better end of a marriage.”

The comment reminded Shallan of something Adolin had said about their betrothal, some change in the power dynamic now that she was a Radiant. Did that bother him?

“It’s part of why I won’t ever marry Turi, you know,” Palona sighed, rearranging her legs so they splayed in front of her. “Gives me the upper hand, in a way.”

Palona smiled warmly at Shallan, with real affection. Shallan wondered for a moment why she’d been so guarded with this woman, after all the generosity she had shown her. Couldn’t she trust her? _Shouldn’t_ she trust her?

“And for you?” Palona went on, “Your boy’s half Iriali, so he knows what affection is at least. That’s lucky, Shallan, you’re lucky to get that one. Powerful family, good fighter, good looking, nice boy, wild about you? The Almighty doesn’t make too many like him. Cheers to that!” Palona exclaimed, holding out her glass for Shallan to clink. They toasted and drank, and this time Shallan didn’t burn off the toxins.

Palona reached up, placing her cup precariously on the lip of Shallan’s desk as she scooted her backside towards a wall, lolling her head on the stone with a grin.

“You’re lucky, Shallan, really lucky. You know that, though, don’t you.” 

Shallan nodded, lip trembling. She was so storming stupid! 

“Oh, don’t cry, naca,” Palona cooed, slurring only a little, “it was just a fight! Everybody has them! He’ll be back before you know it, with some… pencils… or whatever you artists like. Trust me, whatever you said, he’ll be back. Do you believe me?” 

Shallan nodded again, silently. She was afraid to speak, knowing it would unleash a sob. 

“Good,” Palona murmured, looking on the verge of sleep. Shallan focused hard on swallowing her tears, with partial success. She ran her safehand under her nose, making the sleeve glisten with snot. Storms, why couldn’t she cry like a refined brightlady? She was already sad, she had to be disgusting too?

Palona sat forward abruptly, looking at Shallan with wide awake eyes. “You know, I’m so hungry I could eat a greatshell. You want a chouta? Let’s go, we’re getting chouta.”

Quicker than Shallan would have expected, the little woman was up on her feet, pulling on Shallan’s hands with a surprising strength.

“I’ll show you the best place. It’s so good when it’s fresh, storms, so _good_.” 

Grabbing Shallan by the safehand - there was no time to explain why that was a bad idea - Palona dragged Shallan out into the streets towards Little Herdaz.


	33. How Did You Know

Kaladin | Adolin

“Shallan told me,” Adolin said, puzzled. “Wait, how did I know what? What are _you_ talking about?”

Their balcony. How did Adolin know where to find it? Had he known? Storms, _had_ this all actually been a joke on him the whole time, just far more elaborate than he’d imagined? Was this some kind of weird lighteyes game that they were all playing?

“No, wait,” continued the other man, “I don’t have to answer to you at all.” Adolin reached out, summoning his blade. Instantly, Kaladin fell into a defensive stance, Syl forming as a spear in his hand. He had been a fool to think the fight was over, of course Adolin just wanted to take it somewhere more private, someplace they could really do each other damage. 

Storms, though, why _here,_ where so many beautiful things had happened? Was Adolin really about to stomp over all those memories with violence? The injustice of it was mind-numbing, but Kaladin prepared for the attack. What else was there to do?

Adolin sighed as the blade coalesced in his grip. “I’m not trying to fight you again, bridgeboy, I swear it. I...I just needed something to do with my hands.” Pensively, he raised the Blade, running a hand along whatever the back of a sword was called. 

Kaladin relaxed, but Syl obligingly remained a spear. 

“I thought I heard you say earlier that Shallan loves me,” Adolin mused, lifting his eyes to meet Kaladin’s as his fingers toyed with the blade. It was disconcerting. Kaladin nodded in response to the question, adjusting his grip on Syl. What was happening?

“And, um, how do you feel about Shallan, bridgeboy?”

Kaladin hesitated. Storms, he _wanted_ to be honest, but he didn’t like to feel baited like this. 

“Answer me!” Adolin roared. His voice caught in the corridor leading off the balcony, amplifying and distorting it. The effect seemed to startle him. Adolin continued in a level tone, threatening in its calm. 

“Because if I love her and she loves me, there’s no problem. Things are just as I thought, just as they ought to be. But if I love her and she loves me, AND you love her, well, that creates some problems. And if...if Shallan…” Adolin paused, scrutinizing Kaladin for a moment. “Can you do me a favor, bridgeboy?”

Kaladin nodded, ready for the fight to start at any second. 

“Can you tell me how she feels about you? That is, if you know.”

******

Bridgeboy was bracing for an attack. He was doing a good job of not indicating it, but it was still obvious in the subtle way he adjusted his grip on the spear, storms, in the way he didn’t dismiss the weapon at all. Adolin understood that his own behavior would read as threatening, but that wasn’t the point, really. The Blade was becoming his lifeline, giving him strength he seriously doubted he contained on his own. He took a deep breath, locking eyes with Kaladin, who still hadn’t spoken. 

“Help me out, here, bridgeboy,” Adolin pleaded, “this whole business has me in the chasms.”

Color deepened on the other man’s face, though it may have just been the darkening sky. Had this all happened in one day? 

“She loves me too,” Kaladin exhaled. The words resonated too much, as if he had never said them out loud before and was just now getting to taste every syllable. It felt like Kaladin had done the equivalent of exposing his safehand, and for a second those dark eyes flashed at him with something that might have been embarrassment. Cold sweat broke out across Adolin’s brow again, his stomach threatening mutiny once more. He didn’t _want_ this. But he also didn’t have a choice. 

“Adolin,” Kaladin said gently, in a way Adolin hated to admit was calming, “Shallan and I went about things … the wrong way. I’m sorry.” He had dismissed his spear now, and moved to a seat on the ledge, no longer blocking the exit. 

“It doesn’t seem right to talk about it without her here, but we can. Do you want to?”

Adolin dismissed his Blade, arms falling limply to his side. He wanted to leave, to just vanish from that point and reappear anywhere else. If only the balcony were an Oathgate that could transport him to the Reshi Isles, or the Horneater Peaks, or storming Shinovar, anywhere at all besides this strange city-thing, full of magic and bad memories. 

Unfortunately, it was just a balcony, carved out of the same strange city-stuff as everything else. There was nowhere else to go.

Dull as a chull, Adolin dragged his feet to the place where Kaladin had come to rest. Storms, he itched to land one good punch on bridgeboy’s perfect scowl, just black out one of those smoldering eyes or dislocate that symmetrical nose. He wanted it so bad he could _see_ it. But it wouldn’t be worth it. Not now. He was so tired. Maybe later.

Adolin perched an arm’s length away from where Kaladin was sitting. For the first time, he noticed how the whole structure of Urithiru seemed ablaze in the light of the setting sun, the rippled shades of the strata dancing in its glow. Though he would have traded this experience for pretty much anything else, it was still nice to have gotten the small gift of this hideaway, far from everything else.

Kaladin cleared his throat. “I still don’t understand how this happened,” he began, “but it all actually started here, on this balcony…”


	34. Better than the Taverns

Shallan | Palona

Shallan could feel the hard ridges of Palona’s perfectly-shaped nails digging into her safehand through her sleeve. The woman was practically dragging her through the streets of Little Herdaz, scents and sounds assailing them from all sides. Palona had been talking to her the whole time, but it was hard to make out anything she was saying over the din. She could have burned a little Stormlight to clear her mind, but it didn’t seem social to keep doing that while Palona was enjoying the full effects of the wine.

Shallan did, however, use a touch of Stormlight to make herself look like regular Shallan, not 'tipsy and recently sobbing' Shallan. Pattern buzzed from her skirts, excited by the exaggerated promises of the vendors and the playful insults hurled by passersby. “Shallan, this place is full of lies!” he practically chirped in her ear. "Mmmmm yes, even better than the taverns.”

Shallan’s safehand was abruptly jerked to the left as Palona tugged them into a dark, warm and fragrant tent, larger than it looked from the outside. Lit mostly by oil lamps with a few decorative rubies hung prominently (and well out of reach), a narrow counter ran lengthwise from front to back, attended by a large-bosomed Herdazian woman with impressive biceps. She wore a shortsleeved havah and a leather glove on her safehand, a tan apron hanging on her neck and tied at the waist. A colorful silk scarf tied back an unruly cloud of dark hair, which bloomed out from its confines and ended at her shoulders. Shallan took a Memory of her.

At the sight of Palona, she let out a gasp of excitement, punctuated by a stream of Herdazian that Shallan could not remotely follow. Palona responded in kind, finally letting go of Shallan’s safehand in order to gesture at her. The woman got serious for a second, studying Shallan with arms crossed, and Shallan found herself trying to stand taller under the scrutiny. Clearly she had just gotten a rundown of Shallan’s romantic woes. 

“I’m Yoya,” the woman said in unaccented Alethi, sticking her hand out to shake. “You want a drink?”

******

Yoya’s smelled like heaven. Or, more accurately, home.

A few heads turned when she and Shallan came in, and Palona wasn’t sure whether it was because of her or her freckly companion. She didn’t care much either way, but still directed them to a spot at the counter closer to the rear.

Palona inhaled the fragrance of the flatbreads cooking on a wide, flat stone over a fire. Beside it, a vat of oil bubbled away as meatballs and cremlings were dropped in and scooped out, spiced and crispy. She exchanged a smile with the young man standing over the fire, who blushed and gave a cute little nod of deference. 

“Do you have any yellow, Yoy?” Palona turned back to Yoya, adding in Herdazian, “We got started early today.”

Yoya laughed, a single exuberant bark. “Ha! I’m not serving you a shade above orange, ganchita! Can you imagine if the highprincess was seen stumbling drunk out of my establishment? Imagine the fines!” Her friend laughed again as she poured from a bottle of orange wine, diluting it further with some fruit juice.

“Besides, I don’t have anything but orange, and it tastes like riddens,” she added with a wink, placing down glasses before her and Shallan. 

Palona had lost track of the girl for a second, and now noticed her gaping at her surroundings, occasionally blinking in a very adorable way. She nudged Shallan with her elbow.

“You want cremlings or meat? They’re both good, but I’m traditional, I like the meat.”

Shallan hesitated, eyes darting to the fry station. “I… I don’t actually think--”

“Two meat ones please, naco,” Palona called to the boy in Alethi. “Sauce on the side for my friend here.”

Palona closed her eyes and took a long swallow of the mediocre drink. The sound of the meatballs sizzling in the hot oil was like music. 

******

Shallan took a polite sip of the cloudy orange concoction as Palona all but drained her glass. She could feel some stares, being the only lighteyes present, but it was nothing close to the discomfort she’d felt walking into Alethi society for the first time. Yoya was taking an order from a group that had just walked in, calling out to the teenage boy frying the food, while behind her a girl Wikim’s age was arranging, rolling, and saucing choutas at an impressive speed. She caught Shallan staring at her and gave a suspicious glance, as if Shallan were being critical and this was the behavior she expected from a lighteyes. 

Shallan made sure to give her warmest, most gracious thanks when the same girl delivered their food, even though she had no interest whatsoever in eating it. How in storms had she even ended up at a chouta stall? 

“Do you know how to eat this?” Palona asked, already chewing. “Here, you grab it around the side like this, no, here,” Palona grabbed Shallan’s hand, flattening her palm and placing the food inside it. It felt wrong touching food with her whole hand like that, and not at all ladylike. Involuntarily, Shallan let the chouta roll off her hand and back on to the plate. She heard a snicker, and realized it was the girl. Even Yoya smiled indulgently. 

“You want a knife and fork?” The woman asked. “We have them, no problem. You want one?”

It was a genuine offer, but Shallan’s pride was bruised just enough. She was a storming Knight Radiant! She wouldn’t be defeated by dinner!

“No thank you,” Shallan smiled back. “I’m fine, thanks.” 

Pattern hummed quietly from her skirt.

“I’ve heard it’s weird the first time, for Alethis,” Palona conceded, already halfway through her chouta and helping herself to the cup of gravy on Shallan’s plate. 

“Here, do you want a bite of mine? I’ll hold it and you can just bite it like i’m holding your fork. Come on, just take a bite.” 

Palona redirected her chouta, aiming it at Shallan’s face.

“No thanks! I think I get the idea now,” Shallan reached for the rolled up bread again, barely dodging a collision with Palona’s meal. Trying not to wince at the touch, she hefted the chouta into her freehand, giving an exaggerated smile before taking a tiny bite. 

It was storming delicious. 


	35. Here Here

Kaladin | Adolin

“Wait,” Adolin interrupted. “Here? _Here_ here?” 

“Yeah,” Kaladin replied. “Here here.”

“Storming shit,” Adolin laughed. As dusk fell, the blue of his eyes and his uniform grew more and more subdued, their vibrance vanishing with the sun’s light. For some reason, that made it easier for Kaladin to see the other man as a peer instead of a lighteyes, storms, a _Kholin_. He looked more like a regular soldier in this light - a soldier who happened to have just learned that the woman he loved was unfaithful. What an awful thing. Kaladin felt a fleeting anger towards the ones who had made Adolin feel this way, despite knowing one them was himself. 

Adolin furrowed his brow for a moment, contemplating the space in front of him. 

“Were those _your_ spheres I hit off here then?”

Kaladin’s eyes darted to the ground as Adolin burst out laughing. Storms!

“You did _what_?” Kaladin demanded. They were all gone. That had been a fortune! Why hadn’t they picked those up this morning?! But nobody was supposed to know about this place! How did Adolin find it, anyway?! 

Kaladin jumped down, searching the balcony in a panic, knowing he would find nothing. It had been easy to requisition the infused spheres, but only under the reasonable assumption that he would _give them back._ How was he going to explain?

“I hit them off the side, bridgeboy,” Adolin laughed. “Like this.” He mimed tossing a ball in the air and whacking it with a stick. “It really calmed me down actually, I was in a pretty bad way before that. Here, come look.”

The prince hopped to his feet, beckoning Kaladin to join him on the edge of the balcony opposite the entrance. Kaladin followed, peering over the ledge beside Adolin. Syl swooped down as a windspren, weaving in and out of the terraces and spires that loomed below.

He didn’t see anything.

“Huh,” Adolin made an exaggerated show of bewilderment. “I don’t... _see_ them anywhere. I guess we’ll have to wait till the next highstorm, eh, bridgeboy? They’ll light up just like you.” 

Adolin paused, as if struck by an amusing thought. 

“You know,” he finally said, “I’ve been fantasizing about punching you in the face since we got here. Honestly, just really hitting you right _there_ ,” Adolin pointed to the spot on his cheek beside his nose and under his eye, reinforcing the statement with an earnest nod. Feeling the point was made, he turned to look out over the balcony again. 

“It seemed like a fair thing to do, all things considered. But this?” Adolin gestured with his chin to the expanse below, where the wealth of spheres had scattered who knows where. “This is almost as satisfying.” His shoulders shook with another silent chuckle. 

Syl reappeared as a young woman, skirts fluttering. 

“I found a bunch of the spheres, Kaladin,” she reported, taking a second to glare at Adolin. “They’re all over the place, but you should be able to get them all back, eventually.” With a huff, Syl floated protectively to Kaladin’s shoulder. 

Because there didn’t seem like anything else to do, Kaladin laughed, a low chuckle of bewilderment that deepened to a rumble just shy of a sob. There was nothing funny about this, nothing at all, but it was too absurd to grasp anymore. 

Startled by the outburst, Adolin gave Kaladin a quizzical glance, as if to ask what could possibly be so funny. His eyes retained their incredulousness as he let out a laugh of his own. It emerged like a cough, forced and hoarse, before giving way to the easy cadence that Kaladin already found so familiar. 

Sharing this moment with Adolin made Kaladin feel uncomfortable and exposed, but it also seemed wrong to run away from that feeling. What right did he have to make himself more comfortable just then, anyway? The vibrations of Adolin’s laughter resonated in Kaladin’s own chest as eventually, the prince looked back out onto the evening. 

Kaladin found himself struck by Adolin’s...ear, of all things. Why would he ever have looked at it before? Storms, did he know what anybody’s ear looked like, if he really thought about it? 

Well, Shallan’s. He knew what her ears looked like. He had experienced her ears with several senses, actually. 

“Here’s a question,” Adolin said abruptly and a little too loud. Kaladin started, unsure of how long he’d been staring.

******

Adolin felt bridgeboy’s eyes on him, really looking. The sensation made his heart leap into his throat, kind of like...well, kind of like it did when he was near Shallan. It wasn’t a bad feeling, it was just confusing. The silence in the wake of their laughter felt big and expectant. 

“How much money did you leave there?” He gestured back at the floor. “I remember it being a lot.” 

Kaladin started, jerking his head back to follow where Adolin had pointed, though he didn’t have to. Storms, it felt like barely any time had passed since they arrived, but the sun had set, and it was getting dark. It would be a while yet before Nomon gave them any extra light up here. Adolin fished the infused spheres back out of his pocket, resting them on the ledge for light.

Bridgeboy grunted, a familiar sound. “It was a lot.”

“I broke some of your spheres too, actually,” Adolin confessed. “I kind of started trying to cut them open midair? Most of the time it didn’t work but sometimes it did. So, uh, some of them are not really usable right now. Or - whenever you get them back.”

“Huh,” Kaladin grunted again, more thoughtfully this time. “Thanks for telling me.”

Starspren started to appear in the sky. Adolin hadn’t taken time outside like this in a very long time. It was so peaceful.

“How in Damnation did you even find this place?” Kaladin broke the silence that fell. Adolin could hear frustration in the question. 

“By accident,” Adolin replied nonchalantly, as if the balcony were a favorite tavern instead of a secret hideaway. Bridgeboy wasn’t entitled to that story, not yet. 

Though he didn’t really want to know the answer, Adolin asked, “You?”


	36. Ganchita's

Palona | Shallan

Shallan shut her eyes as she chewed her second, much larger bite. Palona could see the tension in the girl’s skinny shoulders melting away as she knocked back half of her wine concoction. For a second, her hair looked wrong, darker, but in a blink it was back to normal. Maybe they _had_ had too much violet back home, after all. 

Shallan gave a quenched sigh, leaning back from the bar. 

“This is the best thing I’ve ever eaten, Palona. Ever in my whole life. You know the other day, Adolin—“

The girl froze, fighting valiantly against tears. Palona waited patiently as she moved past the feeling. 

“This is really, really good,” Shallan eventually said, sinking her teeth into the chouta once more. 

Already finished with her own food, Palona took a handkerchief from her safehand pouch, wiping her freehand and the corners of her mouth. Catching Yoya’s eye, she beckoned the other woman over. 

“What’s up! She doesn’t like it?” Yoya demanded in Alethi, wiping her hands on her apron.

“I love it!” Shallan protested with her mouth full. “Can I have more juice please?”

“Me too, Yoy,” Palona gestured with her empty glass. “And let me buy you one too, ganchita, you shouldn’t force Shallan and I to suffer alone.”

Yoya smiled, a glint of wickedness in her eyes.

“Neda, Her Majesty has requested my presence,” Yoya called out in exaggeratedly formal Herdazian to the girl behind the counter. 

“I must attend upon her ladyship. You’re the boss, OK?”

The girl rolled her eyes and turned back to her work, which seemed to satisfy Yoya as a response. 

“Cheers, ladies,” Yoya topped off Palona and Shallan’s glasses, filling a third one for herself. They toasted, and Palona accidentally sloshed some of the liquid onto her hand. Shallan looked very sleepy.

After they drank, Yoya made a face. “Storms, I was right, this tastes like garbage!” she laughed. “How have you two been drinking this crem?” She slammed down her glass and untied her apron, hanging it on a hook. 

“Come on, let’s get a real drink.” 

******

Shallan was lulled by the hum of conversations in a foreign language, along with the sizzle of frying meats and the ruckus on the street. In the womb-like security of Yoya’s place, she hunched over the meal protectively, savoring its warm, chewy, crunchy perfection. Pattern buzzed happily, completely unnoticed in the din. 

For a second, she had actually _forgotten_ about Adolin, forgotten about Kaladin too, and Jasnah, and storming Dalinar, and all the stupid crem she’d set in motion with that stupid map of that stupid balcony. Shallan wished she could just stay here forever, cooking and serving chouta until she was old. Elhokar had successfully hidden himself in Little Herdaz, maybe she could too? 

Shallan felt a deep gratitude to Palona for bringing her here as they toasted with that terrible tasting drink.

And then they were moving.

It was getting dark when they stepped back out onto the street. Vendors were packing up, and the crush of pedestrians had eased a bit.

“So,” Yoya asked Shallan as they walked. “How did you like Ganchita’s?”

“I--what?” Shallan was confused. She heard the two women addressing each other that way, was she supposed to have an opinion about it? Palona and Yoya laughed in a way that made Shallan feel like there was a joke she didn’t understand.

“Ganchita’s!” Palona exclaimed. “That’s where we just were! I told you on the way over, Shallan, remember?”

Shallan felt herself blushing. She couldn’t hear anything Palona had said on that walk, but of course Palona didn’t know that. 

“Oh, right, right!” Shallan lied, very genuinely adding, “That was the best meal of my whole life. I loved it. Thank you so much, Yoya.”

Yoya smiled and gave a short nod, as if she was expecting that response and pleased to elicit it. 

“OK, Brightnesses,” Yoya said, whipping the scarf off her head and tying it fashionably around her neck, “where are we going? Do I need to take you to a tea parlour or can we go _out_?”

“Out,” Shallan and Palona responded in unison.

“Then follow me, if you please.” Yoya gave a flourish of her freehand, taking the lead.


	37. Because You Love Each Other

Kaladin | Adolin

“Shallan found it - I don’t know how,” Kaladin admitted. “She made a map for me, not long after I got back.”

Kaladin caught the beginnings of smile lines around Adolin’s eyes, more a suggestion than an actual wrinkle. It was a small reminder that the exhaustion and sadness written on the other man’s face were out of the ordinary -- that, given the choice, Adolin would rather be laughing about something. Kaladin found he couldn’t really relate to that.

So it was even harder to start finally telling him the truth, knowing how much it would hurt. Storms, Shallan should be here too. How had this become his job? 

Adolin nodded. Under his lip, Kaladin could see Adolin’s tongue run across the ridge of his teeth, as if keeping something from escaping.

“I see,” Adolin replied.

“Kaladin, I still don’t like this,” warned Syl. She floated up from his shoulder, hovering in the space between his face and Adolin. Through her translucent form, Kaladin saw the other man’s face turn to him, eyes glinting in the spherelight. The cool glow of the gems created shadows on his cheeks and the hollows of his eyes, creating a creepy mask of sorts.

“And you kissed her,” Adolin’s voice was quiet, controlled, and cold.

“I’m ready, Kaladin,” Syl whispered, returning to his shoulder “And I don’t have on that stupid speartip anymore.”

Kaladin nodded. “I kissed her.” The words tasted like bile. But, he loved kissing Shallan! Kissing her was the best thing he’d ever done! He wished he could kiss her right now! Why should it feel bad to say so?

Kaladin suddenly recalled the way Shallan had changed, the night before. The way she had become blunt and businesslike, forcing them to stop indulging in this new-found feeling and start being responsible.

Could he do that too? He could certainly try.

******

It startled Adolin a little bit when Kaladin straightened up, stepping away from the spot where they’d been leaning on the ledge side by side. He instinctively rose as well, ready to defend himself, but it was immediately obvious that Stormblessed wasn’t about to try something. Storms, since when was he so easily spooked? 

“Brightlord,” Kaladin began in a strangely formal tone, “I want to tell you everything, as well as I can, from my perspective. I’m sure there are some things Shallan sees differently, and I hope you’ll talk to her about it, but I believe I owe you some answers, too.” 

He was pacing, hands behind his back like one of the old ardents who gave him lessons as a boy. Adolin found the change in Kaladin’s bearing a little silly, clashing with the scowl and uniform he wore so easily. It was enough to set Adolin at ease for a moment, simply observing bridgeboy’s weird performance.

“What happened here between Shallan and me is...complicated. I know, that’s an understatement, but it’s not as simple as the two of us just lusting after each other or...or anything like that.” Kaladin faltered for a second, not meeting Adolin’s eyes. 

“I’m not sure how much you know about this,” Kaladin continued, “but when Shallan and I were trapped in the chasms, we kept each other alive, and we were also pretty sure we were going to die.” 

Adolin realized that Shallan had never brought up that experience, and that he had never thought to ask. How storming stupid.

“I genuinely thought that she was the last person I was ever going to see,” Kaladin went on, “and after we escaped...well, things got really busy, I guess. You remember. And then I left. There wasn’t really time to think about her, or...us -- I know you said there is no ‘we’,” Kaladin added hastily, “but there is, brightlord. Whether you want it or not.”

Kaladin paused, as if waiting for an objection, but Adolin had nothing to say. He simply stood, feeling intensely alone. Giving in to that loneliness in front of bridgeboy wasn’t an option, though, so Adolin just stood, waiting for Kaladin to start talking again.

Kaladin looked at him, searching his eyes for a response or a reaction. Adolin did his best not to give one.

“Shallan sent me the map leading here when I got back to Urithiru. I’ll be honest, it surprised me, but I came. And I was excited to come.”

“Here,” Adolin interjected. 

“Yes, here where we’re standing,” Kaladin responded, confused that this point needed further clarification. 

“And what were the spheres for?” Adolin asked, as casually as he could. Bridgeboy hesitated, as if deciding what he was allowed to say. He stopped walking for a moment, searching the air around him.

“I’m...I can’t explain that to you. I’m sorry.” It was a genuine apology. What in Roshar was going on?

“What do you mean, you can’t? Is your affair with my betrothed classified information, bridgeboy?” Adolin bit back his tongue. It wasn’t the time for sarcasm. He needed real answers. But what in damnation did that mean? 

“Never mind, never mind,” Adolin began walking his own circuit of the balcony, picking up where Kaladin had left off. “So Shallan made you a map, and you got together, and you drained a year’s taxes worth of Stormlight, and then what? Were you planning to run away together? Have a thing on the side? I don’t know why Shallan told me at all, you could have been very happy in the shadows together for a long long time.” 

Adolin realized he was shouting. He didn’t care. 

“Bridgeboy, _why_ do I know about this?”

******

“Because you love each other!” Kaladin shot back. Storms, was Adolin really suggesting that they should have just kept it a secret forever?

“Because Shallan loves you, and she cares about you, and I guess that doesn’t make any sense, but this thing between her and me isn’t anything _like_ the thing between her and you. I don’t want what you have with Shallan, and she doesn’t want that either, and we don’t want our thing to make your thing impossible, because that would be so storming _stupid_!”

Kaladin threw up his hands in frustration, gesturing at the whole sky. The storming Desolations were here, what a ridiculous thing to yell about.

“I did kiss Shallan. I kissed her a lot. It was an incredible feeling and I would gladly do it again every day of my life. But we agreed we had to stop, because it wasn’t fair to you, and because while I would have done nothing differently, it was still wrong to go behind your back. I’ve lost things more wonderful than that kiss, but I’m not giving up Shallan as a part of my life, Adolin. And I think you would be a fool to give her up, too.”

_Kaladin, watch out!_

Syl’s warning came just before Kaladin’s vision went temporarily black, his neck whipped to one side in a flash of pain. Apparently, Adolin had finally decided to throw that punch.


	38. The Tipsy Cousin

Adolin | Shallan | Kaladin

Adolin’s Blade appeared after ten heartbeats. He held it awkwardly in his off hand, turning it around corners ahead of himself in the narrow passageway. The soft glow of the Blade illuminated the chalk markings that would lead him out of the darkness. 

His right arm ached at his side, hand throbbing. 

“It didn’t feel as good as I wanted it to,” Adolin admitted to his Blade. “My form was sloppy, it just wasn’t…”

Wasn’t what? Satisfying to punch someone unprovoked, then walk away? Of course that wasn’t satisfying! That was a terrible thing to do, even to someone who just called you a fool for being angry that your betrothed was making out with him. 

Come to think of it though, calling a man a fool when you’ve been making out with his betrothed was kind of terrible, too.

Adolin let out a groan of frustration that echoed in the corridor. His own voice sounded younger and more petulant than he expected, like a child who’d just been told to put away his toys. Storms, if he couldn’t even take himself seriously, who could?

“Why did they have to do that?” Adolin whined to his Blade, fully indulging in the tantrum. “I was ready - storming READY - to be a supportive Vorin husband, home with the kids or whatever. I would be a great dad! I would be GOOD at that!”

He still wanted that. He still wanted it with Shallan. Did she still want it with him? What did bridgeboy mean about the thing between him and Shallan being different, that somehow they could do both? Adolin’s heart jumped in his chest again, the same way it had on the balcony next to Kaladin, and he shoved it back down. That feeling was too confusing, too big to look at anymore. Not now.

Adolin kept walking. The Blade in his outstretched hand dictated a slower pace than he wanted, and he stumbled over his feet a few times, impatient to be out, to be home, to put his friendly mask back on and forget the last few hours. An indifferent bustle of bodies greeted him as he stepped onto the streets of Little Herdaz, and he couldn’t have been more relieved. 

******

Shallan felt the itch to become Veil as they approached the Tipsy Cousin. Bright and smoky, a curved bar of soulcast brass took up the back half the space, the rest of which was dotted with small tables. It was raucously loud, but much nicer and cleaner than the taverns Veil usually stalked. Shallan noticed she wasn’t the only lighteyed woman present, and it made her feel a bit more comfortable out of disguise. 

Yoya called out to the bartender in her distinctive staccato way, and soon the three of them were balancing on a trio of stools clustered at the back corner of the bar. 

This time Yoya made the introductions, and Shallan couldn’t tell if she was more surprised by the proprietress’ age - she couldn’t have been more than a few years Shallan’s senior - or by the fact that she was both lighteyed _and_ Herdazian. Laia Telin (she had given her full name) had the golden eyes and long limbs of an Alethi lighteyes, but her short nails were hard and dark, and her deep brown hair fell in exuberant curls around her shoulders. Laia’s wry grin hinted at both vicious humor and easy hospitality, and she was also possibly the most beautiful woman Shallan had ever seen.

“Hey Shallan,” Palona nudged Shallan with her shoulder, “You ok?” Shallan realized too late that she was staring at the woman with her mouth open. 

“Poor thing is having a bad day,” Yoya said apologetically to Laia, then added quietly, “Boy troubles, you know.”

“I don’t really,” Laia gave an amused chuckle that reminded Shallan of a happy chicken, “but I’m sorry to hear that, Brightness. I truly am.” Laia gave Shallan a sincere smile, then turned to the group. “What are we drinking?”

******

“Over here, Kaladin,” Syl beckoned from a dark place a few feet off. 

Kaladin pocketed the spheres she’d just helped him locate, following the direction of her voice just as much as her faint glow ahead. It was comforting how he could always orient himself to Syl, like the needle of a compass. 

“Only a few more left, I think,” Syl reassured Kaladin. A few of the spheres here were shattered, either from the impact of falling or from Adolin’s Blade. Kaladin had already found one or two spheres sliced neatly down the middle, and he couldn’t help but marvel at the control required to split something so small midair. He stored those ones in a different pocket.

The activity of retrieving all the spheres was calming, almost like a kata. Walk, reach down, pick up sphere, put in pocket. Repeat. Lit only by the cool glow of Nomon, the descending terraces on this abandoned corner of Urithiru seemed colorless, frozen in time. Kaladin wondered how long it would have been before someone found the spheres on their own.

Kaladin used a little Stormlight to stop his nose from bleeding, but otherwise allowed the damage to his face to remain unhealed. He reasoned with himself that he should conserve the Stormlight to make sure he didn’t end up stuck on some far-flung echelon of the city, unable to fly back, but Kaladin found he also _wanted_ to wear the black eye and broken nose for a bit. 

The pain served as a continuous reminder that, though his early meetings with Shallan had been secret, Adolin had always been a part of the entanglement, whether they wanted it or not. In a way, the blow from Adolin was initiated the moment Kaladin kissed Shallan that first glorious time -- it just took a few days to truly connect.

Kaladin knew what it felt like to land the sloppy punch he’d received, and so he knew Adolin was absolutely also hurting right now, but with no Stormlight to heal himself. It was a weird show of solidarity, but it made Kaladin want to just...have the pain. For a bit. 

After all, if he was going to love Shallan, and Shallan loved Adolin, then he was going to have to love Adolin, too, in some way or another.

Spheres gathered, Kaladin hopped off the ledge to another below it, Syl guiding the way as a ribbon of light. 


	39. Good Wine

Adolin | Shallan

It felt indescribably good to be out in the evening streets. Adolin inhaled the mixture of cooking food, kicked-up dust and sweat in the air, feeling like he hadn’t taken a real breath in hours. It seemed like an eternity since he’d taken bridgeboy to the balcony, but he probably only had an hour or two to account for, if pressed. Though it would have been wiser to go to Renarin immediately and have the hand seen to, that path came with the price of giving explanations. At this moment, Adolin preferred to keep the swollen knuckles. 

Adolin kept to the busiest pathways, trying not to hold his arm strangely. Where to go, though? The Plate and Blade would be too quiet at this hour, and he was too likely to run into Bridge 4 at the Five Finger Discount. He couldn’t dare to hope for a place where he wouldn’t be recognized, just someplace he wouldn’t be bothered. And — Adolin cursed out loud — someplace they’d take credit without any fuss. He’d left all his spheres back on the balcony, of course. 

That left only two places.

******

After much research, Shallan concluded that good wine was good.

She announced this to her compatriots at the bar, who nodded gravely, then burst into giggles.

This was the first thing Shallan had contributed to the discussion in a while, as Palona and Yoya slipped into Herdazian the more the night wore on. Shallan felt grateful for an excuse not to follow the conversation, and though she had no idea what was being said, it still felt good to laugh when they laughed. 

The Tipsy Cousin was clearly the place you went to impress your friends, or perhaps someone you wished to be more than friends with. Most of the small tables contained pairs of people gazing at one another over their drinks, while larger groups stood in clusters, shouting to be heard over the din. There were notably few uniforms present, and many people seemed to be dressed in their best clothes. Laia had clearly cultivated the atmosphere of a special occasion here, and her patrons followed suit. Of course, her wine was also very good. 

As if by magic, another bottle of auburn was being emptied into their glasses, cradled in the gloved safehand of Laia herself. She made a comment in Herdazian that made the other two women crack up, and gave a wink to Shallan before tending to the rest of her patrons. Palona started explaining the joke to Shallan after the fact, but they both recognized that it wasn’t worth the trouble and toasted instead.

Without much else to do, Shallan spent most of the evening staring at Laia Telin. She wore a burgundy havah, simple in its design but expert in its tailoring, along with a matching glove of fine wool on her safehand. The hue of her dress brought out the deep warmth of her skin tone and the flickering gold in her eyes, and Shallan eventually noticed she wasn’t the only one staring. Big men blushed when she took their orders, and stoic lighteyed women got suddenly shy under her gaze. Shallan started to understand that maybe Laia was just as much of a destination as the establishment she ran. 

Now and then, Shallan’s thoughts would drift back to Kaladin, who might be waiting for her on their balcony right this moment, or to Adolin, who might be telling his whole family the betrothal was off. But she couldn’t do anything about what Adolin decided, and she felt wrong sneaking away to see Kaladin after coming clean to Adolin. And if she did either of those things, she’d have to excuse herself from Palona and Yoya first, and she couldn’t come up with any plausible reasons to do that, either. 

And if she excused herself from Palona and Yoya, she would have to leave the presence of Laia Telin and her very good wine.

So Shallan stayed, and she wished she could stay forever.


	40. The Limping Chull

Adolin | Kaladin

“Adolino Kholino! Come here, you handsome man!”

Adolin leaned over the bar to embrace the owner of the Limping Chull, wincing as he raised his arm to pat Dodan on the back. He decided not to try the Tipsy Cousin across the street, which was even busier than usual. The Limping Chull was darker, quieter, and less inviting than its neighbor, making it a better place to be alone. Plus, it had Dodan. 

It was hard not to smile around the Limping Chull’s proprietor. Barrel-chested and balding, he had been drafted to Aladar’s army and sent to the Shattered Plains when the war started. After catching an arrow in the knee, Dodan took a position under the quartermaster until he’d raised enough money to open the tavern, which he always said was named after himself.

Dodan’s family - he was married to a woman named Mina and had two children - had arrived at the Shattered Plains after the Oathgate was activated. It took them a frustratingly long time to find each other in all the uncertainty of settling the new city, but once they were reunited, Adolin saw a change in the man immediately.

Where once Dodan had been politely curt and unobtrusive in his own establishment, he was now warm and paternal to everyone, as if reuniting with his own family had also made him everyone else’s dad. Adolin was reminded of the way a frillbloom pushed itself open when the rain came, revealing all the color that had existed inside it the whole time. Every time he thought of the Dodan he’d known before, it amazed him that this new person had been waiting inside all the while. 

“I’d like to see the other guy,” Dodan remarked as he caught sight of Adolin’s hand. Adolin hadn’t really bothered to look at it until now, but one of his knuckles had split, a wide, red bruise beginning to form across the bones. Adolin felt the other man take a quick stock of the rest of him, noting that he was otherwise uninjured and his clothes were clean. He gave Adolin a questioning look, but didn’t say anything. 

Adolin went to run a hand across his face and through his hair, but the motion felt strange with his left hand. With a sigh that came out too close to a sob, all he could eventually manage was, “Long day.”

Without asking, Dodan reached into a cabinet and pulled out a decanter wrapped in leather. In the dim lamplight of the bar, Adolin could make out the blue tint of the wine as it was poured into a wooden cup.

“You wanna hear a story, ‘Lino?” 

Dodan tried a smile out on Adolin, and Adolin was relieved he could return it.

“Always, Dodan, always.”

******

Having rescued the last of the spheres from below, Kaladin found himself sitting on the ledge of the balcony. His feet dangled into nothingness, and the air was still and quiet. 

“I don’t like the way Adolin treated you tonight, Kaladin.”

Syl’s remark came out clearly and slow, like she had been carefully considering what to say.

“And not just because he punched you.”

Up until this moment, Syl had mostly left Kaladin to his own thoughts, only speaking to point out where he should look or go next in their hunt for the spheres. He was a little embarrassed not to have considered that she might have something on her own mind, too.

Kaladin’s eye had swollen nearly shut and his nose throbbed from the probing he’d given it to see how bad the fracture was. The muscles of his neck were so stiff it was hard to turn his head.

“I didn’t like it either, Syl,” Kaladin finally conceded. His voice came out strange through the broken nose, both pinched and thick. 

"If he was mad at you, he could have just been mad at you," Syl complained. "He could have just confronted you, or stopped talking to you, or challenged you to a duel or something. But instead it was like he was...playing with you. And the way he was holding his Blade -” Syl shuddered. Kaladin didn’t even know she could do that. 

“I didn’t like it, Kaladin.” 

Kaladin thought back to all Adolin’s strange behavior over the last few hours. The abrupt end to the spar, the endless walk to the balcony, the summoning his Blade just to... _hold_ it? 

The punch Kaladin could understand. The shouting too, even the times he’d gone frighteningly quiet. Those were all ways you might expect a man to react under the circumstances. 

It was the hesitations that were confusing, the actions that suggested violence but never led there, the laughs that came out quick and mangled. Kaladin could see why Syl read that behavior as manipulative, but maybe it was something less sinister than that. 

“I don’t know, Syl,” Kaladin finally responded. 

“Your face looks terrible,” Syl changed the subject. “Are you finally gonna heal it? It would hurt just to look at you if I had a real body.” As if to emphasize the point, she transformed into a windspren, lapping the balcony a few times. 

Kaladin checked his Stormlight. He had enough to fly back to barracks, where he could heal up completely. Or, he could use the Stormlight to heal himself now. It would just be a long walk home.

That was probably better. Kaladin closed his eyes as Stormlight eased the swelling in his eye and re-knit the cartilage in his nose. He gently tilted his head, and found no tenderness in his neck. Storms, it felt good to look out of both eyes again.

“Let’s go,” Kaladin told Syl. He swung his legs around the ledge and jumped back onto the balcony.

“But isn’t Shallan coming?” Syl asked, reappearing as a young woman. “Isn’t this usually when you meet? What if you miss her?”

“I don’t think she’s coming tonight,” Kaladin responded.

“You’re telling me you got a black eye so you could _not_ meet her tonight?” Syl raised an eyebrow at him. “That makes no sense.” 

“I guess not, Syl,” Kaladin sighed. “Can you help me get through those tunnels? I’ve never left that way before.”


	41. Punch a Chull

Adolin | Kaladin

“One time I broke my hand on my chull. Do you know this one? Hold on,” Dodan interrupted himself as one of the tables gestured for another round. A young soldier in Aladar’s colors retrieved the drinks, ferrying them back to the table as they were poured. 

Adolin sat with his drink as Dodan asked after the quartermaster, sending regards to his old boss. The Limping Chull was out of the way for this group, but Adolin noticed that they got twice as many beers as they paid in rations. Adolin took a sip of his wine, which stung pleasantly as he swallowed. 

“So anyway, ‘Lino,” Dodan continued, returning to Adolin’s spot at the bar, “I was a young man. Little Rodan wasn’t even born yet, and Mina and I were just married, very happy, very poor, you know. We have our one chull, we have our one room on the leeward side of a hill, everything is good, right? 

So one day the local lighteyes comes through to survey his lands, or get taxes or I don’t know, something like that, and he comes with his new wife. 

“They come together, and I see this look on Mina’s face, like nothing I ever saw before. We’re from a small village, we don’t see a lot, you know? Like it doesn’t take a lot to surprise us at this time. And I look at Mina’s face, and then I look at what she’s looking at. And it’s this guy’s wife! She’s wearing this unbelievable getup, my friend, like you wouldn’t believe it. Rubies, amethysts, emeralds, all on her dress and in her hair, just glowing their little hearts out like it’s the middle of a highstorm. 

“Now you know Mina, you know she’s maybe the most beautiful woman you have ever seen in your life, right? Right. So I look at Mina, and she’s looking at this woman, and I can see her imagination in that moment, Lino. I can see it, Mina all dressed up like that, with gems in her hair and a dress all covered in Stormlight like that. 

“Anyway, the lighteyes go home, and Mina’s just quiet. She knows we’re never gonna have clothes like that or anything, and she’s too proud to tell me she wants that, and she’s sad because we’re never gonna have it. We’re fifth nahn, that’s crazy thoughts. But I can tell that she thinks them, and I can tell that she wishes for it but she’ll never ever say it to me.

“Lino, I got so mad. I got so mad at how unfair that is, that someone so beautiful and perfect that I love more than breathing could never have something she wants so badly like that. No no, that I couldn’t _give_ it to her. I never felt so helpless in my whole life. And I wasn’t mad at anyone really, just mad at _things_ the way they are, that I couldn’t change them for her.

“So I went outside and I punched my chull. I punched him so hard I broke my hand. He was fine, by the way, just kept eating. But I only had one good hand until the end of the next Weeping.”

Dodan looked at Adolin with dead seriousness.

“You punch a chull, Lino?”

In a flash, the hard look melted into a broad smile that was impossible not to reciprocate. 

“Maybe, depending on who you talk to, Dodan.” Adolin replied truthfully, flexing his fingers. “I don’t think I broke anything, at least.”

“My friend, I know that hand,” Dodan nodded towards Adolin’s fingers as they opened and closed. “And I have never seen that hand on a man who was not in love. But back then I told everyone I fell on my fist and nobody questioned it, so I will do you the same courtesy.”

******

Kaladin and Syl kept a companionable silence as they made their way through the tunnel. Kaladin remembered how the morning had started, leaping off the very top of Urithiru while the morning sun bathed him and Shallan in golden light. He’d felt invincible, filled beyond capacity with affection.

And now, mere hours later, he was trudging through the dark bowels of the city alone. Well, not entirely alone.

“You know why I like Shallan, right?” Syl said, almost to herself. She was in the form of a young woman, drifting lazily beside him.

“Not exactly,” Kaladin admitted. 

“It’s not because of anything about her, Kaladin,” she turned to glance at him before continuing her aimless trajectory. 

“It’s because of who _you_ are with her. Something blooms in you when you’re around her, Kaladin. And I really like seeing that part of you come out. If anything else could do that - or any _one_ , I would like them too.”

Syl fell silent, returning to his shoulder. 

“Plus it’s funny how mad you get when she teases you,” she added matter-of-factly.

There wasn’t anything to say in response to that, so Kaladin kept walking. 


	42. Jorr and Inzo

Shallan | Adolin

Shallan drew, nestled in the nook where the curved bar met the Tipsy Cousin’s rear wall. At some point she’d pulled out her sketchbook and a pencil from her safehand pouch, though she honestly couldn’t remember doing it. It wasn’t clear how long they had been sitting at the Tipsy Cousin or how many glasses of auburn she’d had, but Shallan was so comfortable on her perch that she didn’t care. Sensing the lies like the aroma of good cooking, Pattern had sweetly asked permission to go listening to the conversations around the room. Now and then he would return to Shallan’s skirt, humming happily before rippling off her lap to another corner of the tavern. 

Though Palona and Yoya had long since stopped trying to involve her in the conversation, Palona would throw a protective glance back at Shallan from time to time, coupled with an affectionate pat on the knee or the shoulder. It made Shallan feel cared for and safe.

“You’re quite the artist, brightness,” a soft voice inserted itself into Shallan’s reverie.

Shallan looked up from her sketchbook to see Laia inspecting her drawing, which was of two handsome young men snuggled close at a nearby table. From this angle, Shallan could see the fans of Laia’s lashes and catch the scent of her perfume, which smelled expensive and rare.

“May I?” Laia reached for the sketchbook, glancing up at Shallan for permission. 

The noise in the room was almost deafening, but Laia’s voice and her presence were so perfectly audible, perfectly intimate, it could have been magic. Shallan nodded. Somehow, she hadn’t taken a single Memory of the woman and hastily corrected the error. 

A broad smile developed on Laia’s face as she recognized who was depicted. 

“Hey! Jorr! Inzo! Come over here!” 

Laia’s shout broke the hushed spell as the two men in question looked up, then obediently pushed their way through to the bar. Shallan’s vision swam ever so slightly as she watched them approach. How much _had_ she had to drink?

“Jorr, Inzo, this is my friend Shallan. Shallan, this is Jorr and Inzo.” 

Jorr was the shorter of the two darkeyed men, wearing a jacket dyed deep green over a close-fitting shirt, collar starched smartly. He kept his hair and beard short, and bushy eyebrows framed large brown eyes. Inzo was dressed in a garnet-colored silk shirt that billowed over his lanky form, thick dark hair falling across his forehead. His smooth chin was set seriously in an angular face, and he seemed a little annoyed at having his evening interrupted.

Shallan smiled politely, and then realized the two men were caught off guard at meeting a Knight Radiant in this tavern. They both murmured “Brightness” to her deferentially, refusing to make eye contact. 

Laia laughed her chicken chuckle once again. “Don’t be silly, she’s not going to bite. I just wanted to show you what she drew.” She turned Shallan’s sketchbook to them.

It was pure joy watching the two men’s faces as they saw how they were depicted in the drawing. They commented enthusiastically on the way Shallan had drawn the lamplight on Jorr’s cheekbones, or how Inzo always _did_ cross his ankles just like that. Inzo smiled sheepishly when Jorr assured him that, yes, he really was that handsome, and the way he self-consciously ran his fingers through his hair reminded Shallan so much of Adolin that it felt like a needle through her breastbone.

After that, it was bad.

Shallan went to take the book back so that she could lacquer the page and give it to the men as a gift, but she elbowed her wine glass in the process, accidentally spilling it back onto Laia. The commotion embarrassed the couple, who politely declined the sketch and hurried back to their table. 

Shallan apologized profusely to Laia, who laughed good naturedly and refilled her glass, which Shallan promptly spilled again in her efforts to lacquer the page anyway, just in case the two decided to come back. This was enough to finally get Palona and Yoya’s attention, and the look that crossed the two women’s faces was enough to tell Shallan that it was probably time to go home.

******

“How did you keep going,” Adolin concentrated hard on his hand, understanding that eye contact would make the question unspeakable, “knowing you could never give her something she wanted so much?”

Dodan laughed. He laughed the way parents laugh when their children panic over something small, both condescending and loving in the wisdom of their age. Adolin expected to be offended by that laugh, but it was nice for someone to trivialize this hurt, make it seem like a matter of course, just something to get through.

As if to soften the reaction, Dodan shifted his gaze out the window, observing the swarm around the Tipsy Cousin. 

“Lino, she’s my _wife_ ,” Dodan explained. “She loved me before she saw some sparkles on a brightlady, and she loved me after. I didn’t make anything better when I punched Gavilar - that was my chull’s name - I just made more work for Mina until my storming hand healed. And the whole time I sat around the house stirring lavis porridge while she plowed and carried water I thought about all the beautiful things I could have been doing for her with two good hands. And when I got better, I did some of them.”

Dodan ended the statement with a meaningful glance at Adolin. 

“Dodan,” Adolin posed, avoiding whatever lesson the story was supposed to impart, “did you really name your chull —“ 

“Gavilar, yeah. He was so strong! Together we conquered my plot of land!”

A real laugh welled up in Adolin’s chest, tickling like the beginning of a sneeze. Adolin was desperate for that laugh, craving it, but he was terrified of what might come crumbling down in its wake. 

Instead, he took a deep, careful swallow of wine, then said calmly, “That’s hilarious, Dodan.”

“Hey, ah, did you know your girl was across the street?” Dodan’s question came out half-suspicious, as if Adolin may have actually been staking out the Tipsy Cousin this whole time.

“What? No! She is?” Adolin pushed himself to his feet, which both knocked his barstool over and sent stabbing pain through his hand. The pain and the clang of the stool hitting the floor disoriented him for a moment, and Adolin realized Aladar’s men were watching him. So much for keeping a low profile.

“Yeah, Lino,” Dodan replied, choosing to ignore the commotion, “she’s leaving with two girlfriends right now. They all look pretty toasted.”

Shallan didn’t _have_ girlfriends. What was going on?

“I--” Adolin tripped over himself heading to the door. “I don’t have any--” he pushed a hand into his pocket by way of explanation, shoving the door open with his backside.

“Go, go,” Dodan shooed Adolin out the door with one hand. “Next time. Go, go.”


	43. You're Here

Shallan | Adolin

The air outside felt deliciously cool as Shallan stepped out of the Tipsy Cousin, flanked by Palona and Yoya. Walking had become oddly difficult, so she was grateful for the supportive arms linked through hers. Pattern hadn’t come out with them, but he was enjoying the atmosphere of the bar so much it felt mean to call him back.

As they turned up the street, a body flung itself out of the tavern across the street, a tall man in a Kholin uniform. Lamplight from the taverns caught his golden hair and.. oh storms ADOLIN

“You’re HERE!” Shallan wriggled out of Palona and Yoya’s grip and sprinted to Adolin, nearly toppling him with her embrace.

“I was so worried you were going to call off the betrothal and I was so scared when you summoned your Blade and I did a horrible job of explaining what happened and oh storms I’m so happy to see you I never want to leave you again--”

Shallan melted in the warmth of Adolin’s embrace as he tenderly wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. It was the most right feeling she had ever felt in her whole life.

******

Adolin tumbled onto the street, which drew eyes from some of the revelers hovering outside the Cousin. Self-consciously, he straightened, trying to act inconspicuous. 

“You’re here!” Shallan’s voice was nearly a squeal. Before Adolin had even started searching for her, her arms were wrapped tight around his neck, her voice muffled as she buried her face in his jacket. She was saying something, but Adolin had no idea what. 

Adolin glanced in the direction Shallan had pounced from, and saw Palona standing with her arm around another woman he didn’t know. They were both smiling and waving at him.

“We’re going home,” Palona called, “are you coming?”

Adolin was overwhelmed by the Shallan that assailed him - the smell of her hair, the heat of her body embracing him, the vibration of her voice as she mumbled into his chest.

He looked up dumbly at the two women. There should have been an easy answer to whatever their question was, but as he gingerly wrapped both arms around Shallan, Adolin honestly could not think of anything except the reality of her here, in his arms, loving him. 

Palona and her friend consulted briefly in Herdazian, then walked over to where Adolin was standing, only weaving slightly. 

“Fancy meeting you here, Adolin,” Palona gave Adolin a lazy smile, leaning on her friend for support. “This is my friend, Yoya.” 

The other woman smiled and crossed her well-muscled arms. Storms, was she trying to intimidate him?

“We’ve been having the most wonderful time tonight, haven’t we Shallan?” Palona continued. 

Shallan’s face peeked up from under Adolin’s chin, her eyes bleary and bloodshot. 

“Yeah,” she agreed with a slack grin. 

“And we’re sure you two would love some quality time together, but I think you’ll agree that the best thing would be for you to come visit in the morning, Adolin.”

Palona delivered the directive to Adolin with an unblinking stare. Shallan had clearly had too much to drink, and the woman was right to be protective. Though it was agonizing in more ways than one, Adolin loosened his grip on Shallan and eased her arms from off his neck. 

“That sounds like a good idea,” Adolin agreed. “Shallan, I’ll come see you in the morning, OK?”

“Why?” Shallan challenged, not understanding. 

The friend Yoya laughed, a single short exclamation. 

“Shallan, we had a lot of wine at Laia’s,” Palona explained, speaking with admirable clarity. “We would be bad grownups if we left you with a boy in this state, even if he is your betrothed.”

“Oh. Oh!” Shallan concentrated for a second. In a blink, the goofy drowsiness left her face and she stood a little straighter. She gave a little sigh, as if waking up from a refreshing nap. Damnation, was there anything Stormlight couldn’t fix? 

“How about now?” Shallan asked sweetly. “May I please escort my betrothed” - Shallan hooked her arm through Adolin’s at this - “back to his quarters?” 

“No,” Palona countered, and Shallan only pouted. Storms, Adolin had never seen Shallan _let_ someone tell her what to do before. “But I would be happy to invite the young brightlord back to our home, where we may continue the festivities.” 

Palona put on an exaggerated air, as if she were Ialai Sadeas holding court at a party. 

“Right this way, my very esteemed guests.”

Palona linked arms with Yoya once more, leading the way back to Sebarial’s. 

******

The feeling of Adolin’s arm linked with hers was better than wine - she turned and nuzzled her face into his shoulder, pressing into the firm muscle under the roughness of his coat. Adolin turned his face, burying his nose in her hair as they walked.

“I would never hurt you, Shallan,” he murmured, breath warm and humid on her cheek. 

“I swear it. I’m so sorry about what happened before.” 

Shallan turned her eyes upward and saw the most lost-looking expression on Adolin’s face. His brow was knit over those perfect blue eyes, caught between fear and concern. It made Shallan feel powerful, but not in a way that was pleasant. 

“This is pretty impressive, naca,” Yoya called back to Shallan. She was flipping through Shallan’s sketchbook as they walked. “I should commission you to do a portrait of Ganchita’s, for prosperity.”

“Posterity, Yoy,” Palona corrected, too loudly. 

“Both,” Yoya retorted. 

It wasn’t a very subtle reminder that they had chaperones, but it was enough to cause Adolin to straighten and face forward, throwing her a smile that was meant to be encouraging. He reached his arm up, as if about to squeeze her hand, then hastily straightened it back down to his side. 

“What’s wrong with your arm?” Shallan asked, trying to peek around his body for a look.

Adolin looked extremely guilty, and muttered something Shallan couldn’t hear.

“What?” Shallan demanded.

“I know, it was so stupid,” Adolin berated himself.

“No, I didn’t hear you,” Shallan clarified. “What happened to your arm?”

You would have thought he had confessed to eating someone else’s wedding cake. Adolin lowered his eyes sheepishly, tilting his chin toward Shallan.

“I punched Kaladin,” he admitted through the corner of his mouth. "In the face."


	44. Really Interesting Things

Shallan’s eyes went wide.

“Oh,” she replied, blinking a few times. “Well,” she reasoned, “he can -”

“Yeah, exactly,” Adolin interrupted. “So he should be fine by now.”

“Right,” Shallan agreed, looking distracted. All of a sudden she looked back at the Limping Chull, “Was he...?”

“No, no, it was earlier,” Adolin emphasized, “on the balcony.”

Adolin watched for Shallan’s reaction as he uttered the last word. She turned to him like she’d seen a ghost.

“The where? You…?”

Adolin nodded. “It’s kind of a long story, but yeah. I don’t know, he might still be there.”

“Oh,” Shallan replied.

They walked for a few more minutes in silence as Yoya and Palona kept up their dialogue a few paces ahead. Shallan kept her arm in his as they walked, but she didn’t hide the fact that her mind was elsewhere.

Though he still regretted throwing that punch, Adolin was able to remember that his anger was justified, both at Kaladin and the woman whose nearness was like a salve on his heart. It wasn’t fair that Shallan felt like the solution to the problem she herself had caused, but life wasn’t fair, either.

Adolin wondered if this was what forgiveness felt like. If so, it was unpleasant.

As they strolled past the secret pathway to the balcony, Adolin found himself looking around surreptitiously, as if bridgeboy would come bursting out at just that moment. But he didn’t. Of course he didn’t, he could storming fly. Why was that so disappointing?

“You know,” Adolin found himself saying conversationally, “I learned a lot of things today, really interesting things. And I’m realizing that we - you and me, that is - might have never talked about some of it before.”

“Is that so?” Shallan responded with remarkable control. They might have been discussing what to have for breakfast, the exchange was so bland.

“That’s right,” Adolin responded matter-of-factly. “For one thing, he told me he loves you.”

Shallan’s arm stiffened for a moment.

“I see,” Shallan replied, her voice resonating in a way he wasn’t familiar with.

“He also told me,” Adolin continued, “that I love you.” Shallan’s eyes darted up to him, as if unsure where he was headed.

“Which is interesting, now that I think about it, because I don’t recall every saying that to you before.”

He squinted thoughtfully in a show of recollection. Storms, it was cruel toying with Shallan this way. It didn’t even feel good to do, but Adolin couldn’t stop himself. Shallan seemed about to argue, but had trouble finding words.

“Of course I do, storms do I love you, Shallan,” he blurted. He could feel Shallan relax beside him.

“I don’t know why I never said it before. I kept getting stuck on the betrothal, the practicalities. Like, if I’m already going to marry you then of course I love you, right? But when I heard him say it, that I love you, it sounded like such an obvious thing to say. And...it kind of messed with me that maybe bridgeboy figured that out before I did.”

Adolin found himself going down on one knee. He understood it was a dramatic move, but it was as if his body wouldn’t let him take another step before he did this. Palona and Yoya continued down the road, not noticing.

Shallan stopped, startled. She took a small glance at the two women as they moved down the road, then glanced quickly around them. Storms, she was still afraid of him.

_Prove to her you’re not scary. You’re_ not _scary._

Adolin took her hand in his good one, which was a little awkward, but then so was everything else.

******

That uncomfortable feeling of power nagged at Shallan again as Adolin knelt in front of her.

“I love you, Shallan Davar,” he declared, eyes brimming with sincerity. “I’ve loved you for a long time. I’m sorry for not saying it sooner.”

Shallan knew what she was supposed to say next. The words would be true if she said them, but Shallan also felt they would close a door that needed to stay open a bit longer. If she said “I love you” now, it might communicate to Adolin that the chapter with Kaladin was closed, and it wasn’t anywhere near closed. Storms, the fact that she was even _thinking_ about Kaladin right now was a pretty clear indication of that.

So instead she said nothing.

Adolin shifted uncomfortably, not rising.

“He said you love me,” Adolin repeated, searching Shallan’s eyes. “He said we love each other. Why would he say that if it wasn’t true?”

_Storming Say Something_ , Radiant commanded. _Now_.

Shallan tried to pull in Stormlight, but she’d burned it all to sober up. Why was this so hard?

_Shallan!_

“It is true,” she finally forced out, taking Adolin by the shoulders and guiding him back up to standing. Pattern returned, announcing his presence with a quiet hum.

“It is true,” Shallan repeated, “but a lot of other things are true too. I...can we talk more about this? It seems like there’s a lot we need to catch each other up on--”

Before Shallan fully realized what was happening, Adolin’s fingers curled around the back of her neck, drawing her into a gentle kiss. Shallan drew several breaths through her nose as they stood with their lips connected, frozen in this strange uncertain moment. In that stillness, Adolin’s thumb slid across her skin, tucking itself tenderly behind her ear. It was such a small thing, but it communicated worlds of affection.

That kiss could have lasted full minutes, hours even. It was questions and answers, assurances and doubts. And it felt storming amazing.

******

The sounds of nighttime in Little Herdaz started seeping into the silence that filled the passageway. It was getting late, which gave Kaladin the hope that he could make it back to barracks largely unnoticed. Syl hovered at his shoulder as Kaladin jammed his hands into his pockets and emerged from behind the row of shops, walking briskly towards home.

Kaladin stopped in his tracks when, a few dozen yards ahead, he saw Shallan and Adolin kissing. As perfectly still and beautiful as a painting.

The lamps lit on the street gave their hair and clothes a gentle golden halo, and thankfully both their eyes were closed. It looked like what you would see if someone told you to imagine a prince and a princess kissing, which Kaladin supposed made a good deal of sense, all things considered. Involuntarily his mind returned to the thought of him and Shallan floating midair on the balcony, glowing with Stormlight. He wondered if it looked anywhere as lovely as this.

It was a few seconds before Kaladin decided he needed deeply not to be seen by either Adolin or Shallan, and so he ducked behind a stall, waited a minute, and started off walking in the opposite direction. His skin tingled with the vain hope that they would see him anyway, though of course they didn’t.

When Kaladin got home, he found out that Teft had gone missing. Again.


	45. The Middle of the Night

“We seem to have lost our guests, Yoya,” a voice said from very close by. 

Adolin broke from the kiss to see Palona and Yoya standing so near he could see the wine stains on their lips. 

“How clumsy of us!” Yoya tutted with disappointment. “I was going to pick up choutas on the way, Ganchita, and there would have only been us to eat them.” 

Food.

Adolin realized he hadn’t eaten since before boarding the Oathgate platform that morning. It was a weird pivot from the swirl of uncertainty that lived between his lips and Shallan’s, but he was immediately, distractingly hungry. To his surprise, even Shallan seemed enticed by the offer.

“Come along, young ones,” Palona prodded, taking Shallan by the arm. Reluctantly, Adolin let his hand fall from the soft slope of Shallan’s neck. “We have the whole night still. Let’s get some snacks.”

******

“I am glad to find you,” Rock said as they walked away from the eighth tavern they’d tried without any sign of Teft. Most people didn’t recognize the description they gave, and anyone who actually knew Teft hadn’t seen him. 

“Bridge Four has been missing you, Kaladin.” Rock spoke gently, and Kaladin felt the deep rumble of his words as much as he heard them. It was decidedly worse than booming accusations of being an airsick lowlander.

Kaladin waited to see if there was more, but apparently that was all Rock had to say on the subject. They turned silently into the next tavern, hoping for better results.

******

Renarin opened the door of his room before Adolin could knock. 

“Come in, come in,” he squinted, beckoning his brother inside. Adolin followed, shutting the door softly behind him. 

Renarin stumbled back into bed, mumbling something Adolin couldn’t understand.

“Come on, get in,” Renarin repeated insistently, smacking the space beside him on the bed. Adolin shrugged off his coat and shoes, climbing in carefully beside his brother. It was tricky, as the bed wasn’t really meant to hold two people. 

Renarin mumbled something like, “I’ll do the wine too,” placing a hand on Adolin’s wrist. His form glowed as he pulled in Stormlight from somewhere, and the moment was quickly followed by relief as pain disappeared from Adolin’s hand, the throbbing in his head dulled to perfect stillness. 

“Thank yo—“ Adolin began, but Renarin had already turned away. 

“Tomorrow,” Renarin commanded. “Go to sleep. Try not to touch me please.”

So Adolin did.

******

Kaladin and Rock finally found Teft at dawn’s light, passed out and coatless in a firemoss den.

Kaladin was dismayed to find that he was grateful for the distraction of looking for Teft and getting him care, grateful that someone else’s delinquency eclipsed his own. It was troubling, and it was wrong. 

Something needed to change. He couldn’t keep disappearing from Bridge Four. These were his men — his...people. Just because he and Shallan had opened the door to a world together didn’t mean he should have _gone_. He had responsibilities. He had duties. 

His first responsibility was to report to Dalinar. 


	46. The Wrong Storming Scroll

Kaladin | Dalinar

Kaladin wished the corridor leading to Dalinar and Navani’s rooms wasn’t so long and straight. You could always see who was on duty way before you were close enough to say anything, which made for 30 seconds of either awkwardly trying to not engage, or awkwardly making small talk at an inappropriate volume. 

“Morning,” Kaladin muttered to the guard as he finally approached a respectable distance. He recognized the man as a member of Bridge 13. 

“Morning captain,” came the crisp reply. 

“Dalinar’s not expecting me,” Kaladin explained, “Are you supposed to announce me, or…?”

The guard chuckled. “Sir, I think it’s all right. Other Radiants just barge in, so you’re already ahead of the game.”

Before he could knock, Navani pushed out of the room with a scroll tucked under one arm. Kaladin overreacted, Lashing himself back a few feet. Storms, he was nervous. Why?

“Good morning!” Navani greeted Kaladin as if it were the most natural thing. As usual, her hair and makeup were done elaborately, and Kaladin wondered for the first time when she had to wake up in order to achieve the effect. “Dalinar,” she called through the shutting door, “Company.”

******

Based on the mischievous tone in Navani’s voice, Dalinar fully expected his niece to come flying through the door again with fresh grievances about her ward. It was sort of a nice surprise to greet the bridgeman instead, even though the subject matter was probably still the same. 

“Sorry to bother you so early, sir--” Kaladin apologized before he was fully in the door, wearing a pained expression.

“Nonsense, captain,” Dalinar tried to set the young man at ease. “I know you wouldn’t come unless it was important. What do you need?”

The bridgeman hesitated by the door, as if there were some invisible threshold he was forbidden to cross. This in itself wasn’t terribly unusual, since as a soldier and guard Kaladin was accustomed to being on the perimeters, but there was a tentative air to the man which suited him poorly. 

“Adolin knows, sir,” Kaladin blurted. “About Shallan and me. And...it’s hard to explain, but he has suspicions about the Stormlight discovery.” At this, the young man’s face flushed deeply. “We were...I...we weren’t as careful as we should have been, sir.”

Storms. 

Dalinar wasn’t exactly _opposed_ to Adolin knowing about this new fact of Stormlight, but the fewer people who knew, the better. What had Stormblessed and Shallan done?

“I see,” Dalinar finally responded, deciding not to be curious about details. “So, you told my son about you and—”

“Yes, sir,” Kaladin interrupted. “Well, Shallan did. I’d rather not go into it. I don’t even know if --” the young man balled both hands into fists, releasing them instantly. “It’s not important. But I felt the obligation to let you know, about...that.”

******

Dalinar’s coat hung open over his shirt, his feet bare on the stone floor of his bedroom. Kaladin had seen him in full Plate and full uniform of course, bloody from battle and weary from politics, but never just...living. The sight of him now, just on the other side of being fully dressed, filled Kaladin with a tenderness that he wasn’t expecting.

“I suppose that means we need to invent some kind of explanation?” Dalinar wondered. “Isn’t that Shallan’s specialty? Did she suggest anything?”

Kaladin nearly laughed out loud. How had he gone from being caught in a midnight tryst with Shallan to being a known associate? It was annoying that Dalinar assumed he was spending more time with Shallan than he actually was. Storms, he missed her.

“Like I said, sir, it’s complicated,” Kaladin repeated. “I had some...one-on-one time with Adolin recently, but I haven’t seen Shallan since the meeting yesterday morning, so we haven’t talked about it yet.” 

Dalinar met Kaladin’s eyes, and the memory of kissing him the morning before rushed back, overwhelming him. It was so jarring to come back to the sensation that Kaladin stopped breathing.

“I appreciate you coming to me, captain.” Dalinar’s statement seemed to mean something in addition to what it meant.

For a moment, they stared at each other. And nobody said anything.

******

“I took the wrong storming scroll!” Navani called out as the door to their room flew open. “I thought I had the one with the heat transfer thingy but I took the one with the weight transfer other thingy. Hello again, captain. All right, I’ll see you later, gemheart.”

Dalinar watched with some amazement as his wife entered, swapped her scrolls, nodded to the bridgeman and kissed him goodbye in one unbroken circuit of the bedroom. She didn’t clock the stare she had interrupted, either by design or by accident, and Dalinar found himself extremely grateful for a way out of that moment.

“Anyway, sir, that’s all,” Kaladin moved to leave, apparently feeling the same way. “I just wanted to let you know. I’ll talk to Shallan about what we might be able to do.”

“Good,” Dalinar responded. “Keep me posted.”

“Will do, sir.” Kaladin had his hand on the door, impatient to leave. 

“Dismissed, captain.”


	47. Act Casual

Kaladin | Adolin | Shallan

Kaladin felt cold anxiety spreading through his chest as he approached the guard post leading to Sebarial’s residence. He was a Radiant, he probably didn’t even have to state his business if it came down to it, but Kaladin still needed to do something he was very, very bad at: act casual. 

“Morning, captain,” one of the guards called to him familiarly. Kaladin didn’t recognize the man, but maybe that was just the way of things in Sebarial’s house. 

“Good morning,” Kaladin returned, coming to an abrupt halt by the entrance. He didn’t realize he’d been walking so fast. 

“I’m here to—“

“Very good, Captain,” the same guard said obligingly, pulling open the door for him. 

And that was the end of the exchange. Kaladin walked through the door, which shut quietly behind him. 

“Wow, Kaladin,” Syl remarked. “Being a Radiant is really... _opening doors_ for you.”

Kaladin glanced at Syl with his sternest look of disappointment. 

“Good one, Syl,” he deadpanned.

“Was it? Was it good?” Syl fluttered near his periphery. “Or is it bad? But you’re saying it’s good _because_ it’s bad? You can use that one on Shallan, I don’t mind. I know she loves it.” Syl gave a satisfied wiggle as she rode along on Kaladin’s shoulder.

It wasn’t until Kaladin arrived in Sebarial’s enormous sitting room that he realized he had no idea where to go next. Storms, would Shallan even be here?

“Do you need directions, captain?” Kaladin started at the voice. It was only then that he noticed Palona curled on one of the many sofas, cradling a cup in her hands. 

_I need to speak with Shallan. Is she here?_

That was all he had to say. That was the whole sentence. And he did not want to say it whatsoever. 

Because Palona might hear how it felt for Kaladin to say Shallan’s name, or she might see him blush at the thought of seeing her again, of admitting out loud the fact of their relationship, however benign the context. Storms, this thing with her made everything more complicated. Time for it to end. 

_I need to speak with Shallan. Is she here?_

“I was wonder- I— is Shallan—“ 

Storms. 

“Ha!” Palona laughed.

Kaladin felt blood rush to his cheeks anyway. 

“She’s probably still sleeping, captain. But let’s see. Vesi, please go see if Shallan is available to speak with captain Kaladin.” Palona addressed a uniformed woman of the same age, reading in a chair on the other side of the room. Kaladin hadn’t noticed her either, somehow. 

Vesi put down her book and disappeared down a corridor. 

“Would you like some tea, captain?” Palona asked hospitably. 

******

Adolin woke up in...not his room, feeling much better than he had any right to. Renarin was facing away from him, combing back his hair in front of a small mirror. His Bridge 4 uniform was already buttoned up.

“How’d you do that to your hand?” he asked, still focused on his task.

“I punched Kaladin,” Adolin replied, swinging his legs off the side of the bed. The admission didn’t even feel bad this time. He just felt tired.

“You what?!” Renarin exclaimed, looking halfway backwards, still combing his hair. “Why?!” 

Adolin got ready to explain, but the sight of the Bridge 4 patch on Renarin’s shoulder brought instant regret. Kaladin was his commanding officer, his _boss_. Adolin knew that being a part of Bridge 4 gave Renarin a sense of belonging he’d never known before, and it suddenly felt extremely wrong to both confess to assaulting the man he admired so much _and_ reveal that he was having an affair with Shallan. It would probably come out at some point, but it didn’t have to now.

“It was a misunderstanding,” Adolin said finally. “Bad spar.”

“You were sparring with your fists?” Renarin asked. “Do you do that?”

“Uh, yeah…” Adolin stretched to cover the lie, feigning a yawn. “We were trying something new, and it...didn’t go super well.” Adolin stood, shuffling to the chair where Renarin had carefully placed his discarded coat and shoes. 

“Oh.” Renarin placed his comb beside the mirror. As he gathered his belongings, Adolin felt the hundred things that passed through his brother’s mind unspoken, but couldn’t identify a single one.

“Thank you,” Adolin paused on his way out of the room, placing a gentle hand on Renarin’s shoulder. “I really appreciate it.” 

Renarin nodded without looking as Adolin left the room.

******

“Brightness,” someone was knocking on Shallan’s doorway, which felt like it existed behind her temples. She had drunk so much. So much. 

“What is it, Vesi?” Shallan mumbled at the doorway. The sound of the woman’s voice was about 40 times too loud. 

“You have a visitor. Captain Kaladin is here to speak with you.”

Kaladin. 

Here. 

STORMS

Were there more spheres in her room? There had to be. Shallan pulled hard, willing Stormlight to come out from wherever it might be hiding. She was rewarded with its blissful arrival as she hauled herself out of bed, trusting the Stormlight to ease the headache and clean her blood. 

“Brightness?” Vesi repeated, “If you’re indisposed, I can—“

“No! No,” Shallan interrupted. “I’m just...finishing some research.”

Shallan cast about for a havah to throw on, but nothing except Veil’s outfit lay discarded on a chair. 

“Very well, I’ll ask him to wait.” Vesi’s footsteps sounded on the stone before she had a chance to respond. 

What about the havah she’d worn yesterday? Where was that??

She was still wearing it. Oh. 

“Shallan, does study of one’s own room count as research?” Pattern hummed from her rumpled sheets. 

“I was lying, Pattern,” Shallan took a quick glance in the mirror. She looked like she’d gone on a bender and slept in her clothes. Which was accurate. “Do I smell bad? Can you smell?”

Pattern hummed in response to the lie. “This is an interesting question, Shallan,” he mused, rippling across the floor as she dashed from her room. “Perhaps there is a pattern to scent! But I do not know it.” 

Kaladin. He was here! _Act normal. Act normal,_ Shallan coached herself. He wouldn’t come in the front door like this unless it was official business. 

Shallan burned a little more Stormlight. She could be official. Or, at least, she knew someone who could. 


	48. Keeping Up Appearances

Kaladin | Shallan | Adolin

“Captain, good morning.”

Shallan entered the living room looking as stately as Jasnah Kholin. Kaladin felt immeasurable relief at the sight of her, and it was troubling not to find the feeling reciprocated in Shallan’s eyes. 

Shallan greeted Palona, and Kaladin caught a raised eyebrow from the mistress of the house as Shallan walked briskly past. 

“You wished to speak with me?”

The bland politeness on Shallan’s face felt like a trickle of ice water down Kaladin’s back. He understood that she was probably just keeping up appearances, but he’d also seen her and Adolin kissing last night. So maybe she was just...done with him? The fear returned that he was being played somehow, and it made Kaladin itch with frustration. 

And yet, wasn’t this good news? Wasn't the goal to call everything off? Good or bad, it felt awful. 

Shallan waited blankly as Kaladin struggled to come up with a response. Storms, how had he not thought about this part?

Right. He could just be rude. He was good at that, and it was expected of him. 

“You’re needed,” Kaladin finally responded gruffly. He turned abruptly and exited the room, praying Shallan would follow. 

After a pause, he heard Shallan excuse herself and follow behind. 

******

Radiant was annoyed at the bridgeman’s lack of manners. No proper address, no disclosure of the nature of his visit, not so much as a 'good morning'. But Radiant wasn’t needed anymore, so Shallan dismissed the Lightweaving the minute they exited Sebarial’s. 

“Hey! Can you slow down, please?” Shallan called. Kaladin came to a stop, turning abruptly back to face her. 

“Storming Alethis with your legs,” she muttered, tripping to catch up to the place where Kaladin stood waiting. 

“Oh, my apologies, Brightness,” Kaladin retorted, giving an impressively insincere bow. “Please dictate the pace. Clearly I have no idea what the proper speed to walk might be.”

Kaladin seemed genuinely bothered. Time to fix that. 

“Apology accepted, Captain,” Shallan returned the act, quickly scanning the corridor for company. She held out her freehand daintily. “You may kiss my hand as a sign of penance.”

Kaladin’s eyes darted up in surprise, and Shallan was unable to contain a smile. He straightened himself and lifted her hand to his lips. Extremely slowly. 

“What are you doing?” Shallan failed to suppress a nervous giggle as their joined hands rose through the air. The pads of Kaladin’s fingers were rough and warm, his deep brown eyes full of mischief. 

“I would hate to go too fast, Brightness,” Kaladin replied innocently. Shallan found herself deeply and irrationally jealous of her own hand as Kaladin gently, finally, pressed his lips to her skin. 

Shallan’s insides felt like a kettle near boiling. In an attempt to counteract the part of her that needed all of her clothes to be immediately off, she tried an impression of Radiant’s cool propriety.

“Apology accepted, captain.” Shallan took a deep breath to collect herself, carefully withdrawing her hand from Kaladin’s.

“Now, if you would please direct me to where I am needed, I would greatly appreciate it.”

“Actually,” Kaladin replied, “I was hoping to get your help with that. I’ve never gotten to the balcony from here, and these passageways get a little tricky.”

Balcony. _Balcony._

“Fine,” Shallan agreed, barely controlling the excitement she felt, “but only if you fly us there as fast as you possibly can. I’m extremely impatient to be on with it, you see.”

******

Adolin took a whole bath back in his room. Though Renarin had apparently cured the hangover that he’d worked very hard to earn, it still felt good to soak in warm water, washing away the day that had come before. Storms, it hadn’t even _been_ a full day since he’d rushed out of Shallan’s room, and so much, so many things…

The night out with Shallan hadn’t helped, either. After that long, strange kiss on the street, they never once mentioned Kaladin, choosing instead to enjoy the evening as if nothing was wrong. Adolin was desperate for the normalcy afforded by this choice, but it wasn’t a sustainable lie. Was it? 

No, it couldn't be. For all he knew, Shallan could be with Kaladin right now, which could be the case whenever she was away from Adolin. He couldn’t live that way, pretending that Shallan was his whenever she happened to be in the same room, ignoring the fact that she wasn’t his whenever they were apart. 

But. He loved her. And she loved him too. Right? Why couldn't she say it back?

“How are we supposed to do this?” Adolin asked at his sword. He wasn’t about to summon it in the tub, but the intention was the same.

Adolin knew the normal reaction was supposed to be anger, and he _was_ angry, he just— he had no desire to call things off with Shallan. He had no desire to publicly call Kaladin out, not that that wasn’t a bad idea for a host of reasons. He just...wished that none of it had happened. At all. That he could take his Blade and carve away the parts of Shallan and Kaladin that wanted to be with each other. Neatly and surgically. Back to normal. Back to how it should be. 

But of course, he couldn’t actually do that. 

The water in the tub was getting cold, so Adolin dried off and got dressed. 

******

The ravenous joy that spread across Shallan’s face threw Kaladin’s pulse into a frenzy. There were important things to talk about, so many important things. Such as how this entanglement was making him very bad at his job and probably needed to end, for example. But storms, he had missed Shallan so much, was so scared that in the blink of an eye she had just...stopped loving him.

But Shallan was here, and she was smiling that smile. So it was hard to remember what else could possibly be important. 

Shallan turned and walked briskly - she was practically running - down the corridor to a place where the pathway split. She paused at the start of the tunnel. 

“It’s down this way.”

Kaladin put a hand at Shallan’s waist, using a little Stormlight to stick it there, just in case. He fought the impulse to bury his face in that tousled hair, devour her on the spot. 

Instead, Kaladin said, “So it’s just going to feel like falling _that_ way,” pointing directly ahead of them. “We won’t go too fast at first, but I need a couple seconds of notice if we need to make a turn. OK?”

In response, Shallan took his face in both hands, kissing him hard. Just then, Kaladin felt like he might have been able to float without any Stormlight at all. 

“Fine, whatever,” Shallan kept her face inches from his own. Her breath was surprisingly bad, but he didn’t care. “Let’s just go now, please.”

Then Kaladin’s ears were filled with the sound of Shallan yelling, because they were falling down the hallway.


	49. No Mating

Shallan | Adolin

“We’re gonna fall now, get ready,” Kaladin said.

It had been an awkward and jostly trip down the passage to the balcony, full of disorienting moments where Pattern had to help Shallan remember which way they were headed, full of opportunities to clutch harder at Kaladin, nestling her nose in the spot behind his ear. He smelled so good. So storming good.

As Kaladin cancelled the Lashing, Shallan landed flat on her back, knocking the air from her lungs.

"Oh! Sorry!" Kaladin, who had of course landed on his feet, reached down to help her up.

“Ow!” Shallan yelled in the most accusatory way she could muster.

“Sorry,” Kaladin apologized again, using the opportunity to pull her into a very distracting embrace. “I guess I could have been more specific about _how_ to get ready--” 

“I don’t care,” Shallan interrupted, launching her mouth onto Kaladin’s. She pulled all of the Stormlight from him instinctively, kissing him hard as if somehow it was a way to be closer, to get more of him into her. Shallan’s teeth clanked into his, mouth wide, tongue casting about to taste everything that lay beyond Kaladin’s lips. A surprised laugh shook Kaladin’s chest as he pulled Shallan so close that her heels lifted off the ground and her toes tangled with his ankles. Shallan could feel Kaladin’s heart pounding against hers like two hands clapping.

Greedy and impatient, Shallan clumsily felt for the buttons of Kaladin’s uniform. Stupid safehand sleeve! She reached her hands around Kaladin’s neck and went to undo the buttons of her--

“NO MATING!”

Pattern’s voice was muffled on the fabric of her bodice, crushed against Kaladin. The strange vibration stopped them both in their tracks, breathless and aroused beyond all belief.

Shallan launched herself back from Kaladin in the same moment that he broke away, pacing the balcony.

“No Mating!” Pattern repeated, cheerily adding, “Shallan, was this correct?” 

“Yes, thank you, Pattern,” Shallan was panting, swallowing hard as if this would ease the mind-numbing desire that was about to lead to some regrettable decisions. She crossed to the opposite ledge of the balcony, sliding down the low wall to sit on the ground. “Thank you, I guess.”

*******

“Kholin!”

Zahel’s voice greeted Adolin as he entered the practice grounds. Before coming to meet him, the sword master finished giving a few gruff instructions to another ardent, who was training a young soldier with a spear. 

“You did the right thing coming back today,” Zahel said as he walked over. Adolin felt that he was meant to be offended by that statement, but he wasn’t sure why. So he changed the subject.

“You know, there’s a lot of Kholins around here,” Adolin pointed out. “You never know who’ll respond when you call out like that.”

Zahel snorted. “I always know. Better!” he called to the young man, who brought his spear up just in time to parry a hit with the ardent’s practice sword. The youth smiled bashfully, dutifully resetting his stance without looking at the swordmaster. “50 more times or until he can do it without thinking, whichever comes second.”

The ardent nodded, patiently correcting their charge’s form with firm hands. It was hard not to recall the absolute ease with which Kaladin and his spear traversed the area the day before. Thinking about the man kicked up a swirl of sensations that Adolin needed not to feel just now, and he found himself fidgeting to get rid of the feeling.

“Come on,” Zahel commanded, interrupting Adolin’s thoughts. 

“Your Stonestance yesterday was embarrassing. Let’s give it some attention.” 


	50. Tempest Within

Kaladin | Adolin

Syl trailed in front of Kaladin, her eyes wide in a look of delighted disbelief.

“Kaladin, that was AMAZING! She was all over you! That was so intense, I can’t even believe it! I thought she was trying to _eat_ you for a second!”

The sound of his own rushing blood rang in Kaladin’s ears. He felt disoriented and utterly stupid, unable to think clearly. His legs kept him moving back and forth, as if this would help ease the very different kind of tempest within. 

“We shouldn’t have done that, right?” Kaladin called over to Shallan, collapsed in a heap against the balcony’s ledge. He had trouble looking at her, like she was too bright or something. 

“No, we shouldn’t have,” Shallan gasped back. “Good job, Pattern.”

Shallan’s spren hummed contentedly from the center of the balcony, a floating ball of twisted lines. 

“So that’s probably something we should figure out,” Shallan mused, “is how, uh, not to do that. Storms, I almost used my _safehand..._ ”

“Should I just...I should just go, right?” Kaladin offered, preparing to step off the balcony before realizing that Shallan had taken all of their Stormlight. 

“No! No,” Shallan argued. “No, uh, yeah, no. You shouldn’t go. Because…oh storms.” Shallan fixed a look on him like an invitation. 

“We shouldn’t,” Kaladin repeated, still hesitating by the ledge, wishing he was saying and doing very different things. 

“Right,” Shallan hastily agreed, breaking eye contact. “OK, but don’t go, because if you go now then when will we see each other? And what did you come to talk to me about anyway? Or was there not actually anything?” 

There were two topics Kaladin came to discuss. He chose the easier one.

“I saw Adolin yesterday.” 

******

“Again,” Zahel instructed, stepping back into position as Adolin picked himself up off the ground for what could have been the fifteenth or fiftieth time. 

Taking his Blade in two hands, Adolin returned to Stonestance. 

“I don’t know why you chose Stone yesterday,” Zahel commented as he hacked repeatedly at Adolin with a short sword, holding up a long shield to parry Adolin’s single downward strike of retaliation. 

“You should’ve used Windstance,” Zahel grunted as he threw Adolin off the shield, “it’s obviously the right match for the bridgeman’s fighting style. You two looked like a skyeel and a whitespine trying to dance yesterday.”

Adolin prepared to make another hit, only to be harried by a flurry of strikes from Zahel, aimed at preventing him from raising his weapon. Waiting for a lag in Zahel’s attack, Adolin swiped down quickly, knocking the sword out of Zahel’s hand. The ardent threw up his shield as Adolin rained down blows, over and over and over—

And then he was on his back, feet kicked out from under him. Zahel had used the cover of his shield to slide a leg out and jerk Adolin off balance. 

“That was better,” the other man allowed. “Your mind is too busy though, Kholin. That'll kill you.”

Already back on his feet, Zahel offered him a hand. Adolin dismissed his Blade, accepting the help. 

“Don’t bring your problems to the practice grounds,” Zahel cautioned. “The whole point is that there are no stakes here. But I know you know that and you’re just being foolish. Come back tomorrow,” the ardent commanded, turning away from Adolin.

Zahel gestured at an ardent near the water barrel, who ran to bring Adolin a cup.


	51. A Perfect Audience

Kaladin | Shallan | Adolin

“Kaladin! Why are you talking about Adolin?!” Syl’s delight slid effortlessly into exasperation. She seemed pretty angry, actually.

“Oh. Yeah, he told me about that,” Shallan recalled. “Storms, how’s your face?” Shallan scrutinized him as if she hadn’t just caressed every inch of his face, which felt uncomfortable. 

“Oh, you know...I healed it,” explained Kaladin, a little embarrassed stating the obvious. 

“Yeah, right, of course,” Shallan laughed awkwardly. “Oh storms, and that was here?” 

“Yeah! I still don’t know how he found it!” It felt good to voice that frustration to someone else, and the change of subject helped break the hazy feeling in his brain. “You didn’t tell him, right?”

“No! No, I would never do that!” Shallan stood for emphasis. “That’s so strange…”

“Yeah,” Kaladin agreed.

He went on to explain his disorienting day with Shallan’s betrothed, from the not-really-a-spar, to the long walk to the balcony, to the loss of all the spheres, to his attempt at explaining their - well his - side of things. Here and there, a shiver of longing would pass over Kaladin, his hands and mouth impatient to return to their earlier business, but the conjured specter of Adolin kept Kaladin grounded, reminded him that everything he and Shallan did together had consequences elsewhere. For her part, Shallan never stirred or interrupted, a perfect audience.

Not quite by accident, Kaladin left out the laugh he and Adolin had shared and the awkward moment that came after it. Definitely on purpose, he left out the glimpse he had caught of Shallan and Adolin kissing in the street.

None of this seemed like the right way to start breaking up with someone, but it was still a relief to say it out loud. 

******

There was something odd about the way Kaladin described the time he spent with Adolin the day before. It could reasonably have been more violent, more uncomfortable, more anger-inducing, but it mostly sounded puzzling. Kaladin told the story with concerned confusion, as if Adolin were a medical patient exhibiting symptoms he couldn’t quite diagnose. The sense of danger was there, the way she remembered him in her rooms that morning, as well as the way he would abruptly restrain himself in those moments of danger. It was something she had never really noticed in her betrothed before, and it made her wonder for the first time if he was capable of keeping his own secrets.

Shallan refrained from explaining any of this to Kaladin though, feeling that it would be some kind of betrayal. Less of a betrayal than what she was already engaged in with Kaladin, sure, but there had to be a line somewhere.

It was also a little confusing learning what Adolin had been up to in the hours before their encounter outside the Tipsy Cousin. 

Contrary to their original goal of going home, Palona and Yoya ended up taking her and Adolin all over Little Herdaz. The two women were endlessly entertained by the fact that Adolin seemed to know _everyone_ , and that everyone _loved_ Adolin. It was exciting being adjacent to the camaraderie her betrothed elicited everywhere they went, and it seemed to make him feel better too. With the Lightweaving Shallan placed over his busted hand and a few more rounds of drinks, it got easier and easier to forget that there was anything to worry about, or really anything at all outside of Adolin's company. 

They shared a sweet, sloppy, supervised kiss goodnight at the entrance to Sebarial’s, and Shallan fell asleep feeling that everything would be OK. 

But then she'd seen Kaladin again, and all the fun and reassurances evaporated under that gaze. 

So, that probably wasn't great. 

******

"Brightlord," a messenger - Adolin couldn't remember his name - puffed onto the practice grounds. "His Majesty would like to speak with you."

"Thank you," Adolin responded, taking another swallow of water.

The young man stood expectantly, clearly hoping he would do Elhokar's bidding immediately. Adolin chuckled.

"If Elhokar is hoping to see me right away, please let him know that I'll need a few more minutes, as a favor to his royal sensibilities." At this, Adolin spread his arms to indicate the large patches of sweat that covered his shirt. "Because right now, I smell like a pig."

The messenger blushed a little at this, and pushed a booted toe into the sand. Adolin always felt a little bad when he made the young ones bashful. It wasn't their fault. 

"I promise to take full responsibility for my lateness," Adolin reassured the messenger...Romy! Romy was his name. "Will you let him know for me, Romy?"

At the sound of his name, Romy looked up from the ground, reddened face returning Adolin's smile.

"Yes, brightlord," he bobbed in a quick bow, retreating to the exit. 

"Thank you!" Adolin called, dragging a towel across the back of his neck. Now that he thought about it, it had been a dumb move to take a bath first. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Romy character got a little makeover this time around - I have no idea what I was planning to do with that relationship in the first version, so it's just not there anymore! Also, a tiny slice of sweaty Adolin cheesecake never hurt anyone.


	52. A Responsibility

At the end of his story, Kaladin paused.

“Shallan,” his voice sounded strained and careful, the way voices sound when someone is about to say something they know the other person doesn’t want to hear. 

“I had to go searching for one of my men—my people— last night. We found him in a bad state...firemoss...and I realized I was _happy_ about it. Because if he was going through so much, then maybe Bridge 4 wouldn’t notice how I keep going missing to be with you. 

Kaladin gave Shallan a pleading look, eyes darting to a spot in the distance and then back again. 

“I have a responsibility to them. To Dalinar too. And the way things are right now...I’m failing them.”

Those last words were uttered quietly and painfully. 

“I can’t let them down anymore. I’m sorry.”

******

“Oh,” Shallan responded. “I see.” Her eyebrows knit together in concern. 

“No!” Syl shouted for the dozenth time, zooming around him like a flying cremling. “Kaladin, you don’t have to! No!”

“Very well, then,” Shallan’s posture straightened, her eyes taking on the same formal hardness he’d seen earlier. “We must attend to our duties, of course. I admire that about you, captain. Truly.”

Shallan approached him with a few brisk steps, halting at arm’s length, and Kaladin heard a buzzing sound as her spren absorbed itself into her skirt. The midmorning sun caught Shallan’s hair and lashes where she was standing, and she glowed with a warmth that Kaladin wished he could swallow. 

But almost in front of his eyes, the image of Shallan before him was replaced by the memory of her and Adolin kissing on the street, torchlight playing across their embrace. 

This was better. This was right.

Right?

Shallan took a small step closer, more hesitantly this time. 

“I would like to return the Stormlight I took from you earlier. It doesn’t seem fair to hoard it all. May I?”

Kaladin nodded, though it was excruciating to do so. Carefully and gently, he leaned down and touched his lips to Shallan’s, drawing in Stormlight. Shallan’s lips trembled as he kissed them, and when Kaladin withdrew, he realized they were both crying. 

“Don’t go, Kaladin,” Syl urged once more. “You can figure it out! It doesn’t have to be like this!” 

Kaladin made a small bow to Shallan.

“Thank you, Brightness,” his voice came out less formal than he was hoping. 

“You’re welcome, captain,” Shallan brushed the tears off her face, smiling a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I am sure I’ll see you soon.”

She turned away quickly as Kaladin stepped off the ledge of the balcony, grateful for such a long way to fall.


	53. Chull Dung

Shallan | Kaladin

“No…”

Shallan cursed and spun back to the place where Kaladin stood. Maybe he hadn’t left, maybe--

Only sky occupied the space. Sky and stone.

Shallan felt all her insides drop, as if she were the one who’d just tossed herself into oblivion. 

“He should be here, he...he shouldn’t…”

Suddenly lightheaded, Shallan staggered to the ledge, bracing both hands against the balcony’s cold stone. It took a moment to make out the blue-white smear of Kaladin soaring across the hulking mass of Urithiru. How had he already fallen so far? 

“You shouldn’t have spoken for me!” Shallan scolded the air, braced against the ledge as wind chilled her tears. In the bright sunlight it was no longer possible to make out Kaladin’s glowing silhouette. “If you hadn’t—“

 _He would’ve found out about the Ghostblood thing_ , Veil reminded Shallan, whose lungs were full of Kaladin’s name. If she could just get him to come back…

 _He’s wise to remember duty,_ Radiant chided as gently as she could manage, _both to his loved ones and as a Radiant._

 _Let him go, Shallan,_ Veil and Radiant urged at the same time, surprising all three of them. 

“Shallan?” Pattern prodded from her skirt. “You said it was a good job to tell you ‘no mating’. Was this incorrect?”

The question prompted a wave of sensations. Kaladin’s mouth. Kaladin’s smell, his arms around her…

Shallan’s stomach heaved as desire joined the jumble of emotions swirling inside her. She backed away from the ledge, crumpling to the ground. Never again? None of that ever again?

“Shallan?” Pattern prodded, hovering midair beside her. She was probably just imagining it, but the spren’s buzzy words sounded...concerned?

“It was correct, Pattern,” Shallan replied bitterly. “But I didn’t like it. I don’t like it.”

 _Get up now, Shallan,_ Radiant instructed, clearly trying to be sympathetic while rapidly losing the patience to do so. 

_This shouldn’t be difficult,_ Radiant coached, _you have a betrothal, you have a role, you have responsibilities. This...whatever you were doing with Kaladin..._

“It was _real_ ,” Shallan spat, shoving Radiant’s admonishments aside. Storms, it was like having Jasnah around at all times. 

“It _is_ real,” Shallan repeated defiantly before her own thoughts could interrupt. Could it be real _and_ over? And what about Adolin? No, no. Not that now. Adolin was separate from the sadness she felt.

Suddenly exhausted, Shallan turned her back on the balcony and headed back to her room. The return trip was much longer, for a host of reasons.

******

“Kaladin, why did you DO that?!” Even though Syl’s voice was crystal clear in his ear, she was still shouting at him.

“It can’t keep going like this, Syl!” Kaladin shouted back in frustration. He would have liked to punch a chull square on the backside just then. “She’s already betrothed to someone, someone who loves her. I’m bound to Bridge Four, and they depend on me. There’s no way we can do this right. And did you see how she reacted? She just let me go, Syl. If she can let go, I have to, too.”

“No you don’t!” Syl countered. Storms, why was she being so stubborn? “Kaladin, I _know_ what you have with her. _You love each other._ You’re punishing yourself for no reason!”

“No reason?” Kaladin shouted, aiming all his pent-up frustration at Syl. He turned abruptly away from Urithiru and into the open air, stopping short hundreds of feet above the earth. 

“No reason? Syl, you’re an _honorspren._ I shouldn’t have to explain to you that helping someone break an oath to a loved one is bad.”

“And _I_ shouldn’t have to explain to _you_ that what you’re talking about is less than crumb of a shred of an oath!” Syl balled her tiny fists, hovering before Kaladin’s nose with a look that was clearly meant to be a scowl. 

“That betrothal? The causal what’s-it that someone wrote on paper or something, saying one day Shallan and Adolin will this or that or whatever? Kaladin, those things are meaningless to us! We know humans enough to understand that you trample on those promises _all the time._ And anyway, Adolin creeps me out and I don’t trust him.”

At that, Kaladin suddenly sensed the weight of the spheres in his breast pocket, sliced neatly in half. He stopped his hand halfway towards reaching for them. 

“I’ve been there for all of your whole thing with Shallan, remember?” Syl continued, not noticing. “The night where you two just sat there with your heads together? That was an oath. The way you protected one another in the chasms? That was an oath. That stupid pair of boots you’ve been trading back and forth since the say you met? That is an oath. Well, it was just boots at first, but now it’s as much of a bond as a wedding band, as far as I’m concerned.” 

Syl was darting back and forth across his vision in agitation. As she paced before him, Kaladin felt his chest soften with the memory of each of the moments he and Shallan had shared. 

“Shallan exchanged those things with you, with her own will and her own heart,” Syl lectured, “so I don’t want to hear anymore _chull dung_ about pieces of paper stopping you from loving each other, because— _What_ is so funny?”

Laughter escaped from Kaladin, real laughter. 

“Syl, where did you learn ‘chull dung’?” He asked. It shouldn’t have been this funny, but he was laughing himself to tears—well, different tears. 

“Oh, some friends of yours,” she retorted, suspicious of his shift in mood.

“I like it.” Kaladin resumed his journey back to Bridge Four.

“Hey! _Go back to her,_ Kaladin!” Syl prodded, swirling around him in a way that betrayed her desire to physically drag him back to the balcony. “You’re allowed to have more than just pain!”

As Kaladin raced through the air, wind caught the cuffs of his uniform and tugged at his hair, windspren streaming past. It was a sacred level of solitude, more precious to him than a good many things. 

“I know that, Syl,” Kaladin replied calmly. He longed to be with Shallan, but it would never work the way things were now.

“But I have the wind, too.”


	54. Small Hemisphere

Kaladin | Adolin

“If you just took it in around - exactly, can you hold that there for me?”

Adolin’s voice was not supposed to be coming from the Bridge Four barracks. Kaladin briefly considered walking back out of the room before deciding that this would be some form of defeat on his part. This was his house, after all. Well, technically his house was part of Adolin’s father’s holdings, but _still_. 

"Damnation,” Kaladin grumbled out loud, turning the corner to see Teft standing on the barracks’ one round table, looking a little self-conscious. Adolin and Drehy stood on either side of him, pinching in his uniform at the waist. Adolin had his back to Kaladin, but Drehy gave a bashful smile upon seeing him enter. Kaladin shook his head at Drehy’s attempt at a greeting, and other man nodded quietly. 

“Can you move your arms around?” Adolin asked, looking up at Teft. “Is that comfortable? OK, good, that’s good. One second.” 

Adolin fished a piece of chalk from his pocket and marked where his fingers held the fabric, then passed it to Drehy so he could do the same. 

“It’s a shame we didn’t have one closer to your size, but we can make this work.” Adolin held out his hand for the jacket as Teft shrugged it off, finally noticing Kaladin standing there.

“Captain!” The man looked mortified, rushing to come down from the table. He was looking much better than he had that morning, but the fatigue still came off him like Stormlight.

“Oh Bridgeboy, good! I’m glad you’re here,” Adolin said, carefully folding the jacket and draping it over one arm. 

“I live here,” Kaladin deadpanned. “Why are you here?”

“Elhokar wants to see us about the Kholinar mission,” Adolin explained. “While I was waiting for you I happened to notice that Teft’s new coat is too big, so we had a fitting to pass the time. Your next shift is tomorrow morning, right?” Adolin turned to Teft, who stood at attention nearby.

“Yes, sir,” Teft said.

“I’ll have it back to you by this evening, then,” Adolin smiled that famous smile, which was infuriating, but also other things that Kaladin wasn’t expecting to feel. The weight of the split spheres in the pocket over his heart became suddenly more pronounced. 

“Shouldn’t keep the king waiting, _captain_ ,” Adolin overenunciated the official term, as if he deserved congratulations for not calling Kaladin ‘bridgeboy’. 

“Are you ready now, or…?” A split second of...something passed across Adolin’s brow. Storms, why was he so hard to read?

“I really don’t like him, Kaladin,” Syl grumbled in his ear.

“Hold on,” Kaladin held a hand up, walking quickly to his room. “I’ll be ready in a second.” 

Back in his room, Kaladin scooped all of the split spheres out of his pocket, dropping them onto the table beside his bed. He hadn’t looked at any since pocketing them the night before, and it was remarkable how perfectly each one was sliced in half. Though he wasn’t really sure why, Kaladin took one piece back and placed it in a trouser pocket. 

“Kaladin, the last time you took a walk with this guy he was really creepy and then he _punched you,_ ” Syl reminded him. 

“Next time I’ll punch him first, Syl, I promise.” 

Kaladin tugged his jacket straight before going to meet the Kholin prince. 

******

Adolin wasn’t expecting to feel any particular way about seeing Kaladin again, but it turned out he felt a lot of ways.

Thankfully, Teft’s coat hanging off his forearm gave him both something to discuss and something to do with his hands while they walked to Elhokar’s chambers. 

“I heard Teft’s been having some trouble--” 

“I appreciate your concern,” Kaladin interrupted, “but I would rather not discuss that with you.”

So much for that topic of conversation. Kaladin was tense, as tense as he’d been on their tour of Little Herdaz, which Adolin supposed made sense, after everything that had happened.

“I owe you an apology, bridgeb-- Kaladin,” Adolin exhaled. His pulse fluttered nervously. Why?

“I’m sorry for punching you. Actually -- I’m sorry about how all of it went down. It wasn’t fair to put you through all that.”

Kaladin didn't respond. They walked in silence, turning a corner that led away from the main walkways. 

“I saw you and Shallan kissing last night,” Kaladin said quietly, speeding up Adolin’s heart rate further. 

“Oh?” Adolin asked casually, picking at a loose thread on the coat. He’d have to trim that. He looked quickly behind them, ensuring no one could hear. 

“Yeah.” Kaladin replied. “After you...left, I went down to pick up all the spheres.” Kaladin reached into his pocket, pulling out a small hemisphere with a fleck of blue in its center. He passed it to Adolin, who tried not to notice or care when their fingers touched. Storms, why did he both notice _and_ care?

“It really is impressive,” Kaladin said as Adolin examined his own handiwork. “Colossal waste of resources and time, but it looks nice. Kind of like your wardrobe, brightlord.”

Adolin shot a glance at Kaladin, who was trying not to look pleased with himself. 

“I thought you were going to say kind of like _me_ , so that’s not so bad,” Adolin held the hemisphere aloft between his fingers, hoping not to initiate more physical contact with the return of the item. Blessedly, Kaladin took the hint and positioned an open palm to catch the trinket as he dropped it. 

“Anyway,” Kaladin continued, nudging the fragment into his hip pocket, “when I came out of the passageway in Little Herdaz, you and Shallan happened to be up ahead...you know.” Kaladin shrugged meaningfully. 

“Oh,” Adolin replied, recalling how he’d looked for Kaladin just before that moment. 

A tentative silence rejoined them for a few steps.

“I saw Shallan today,” Kaladin volunteered, out of nowhere. “We...it...it’s over.”

Adolin looked to Kaladin in surprise, but the other man’s gaze stayed ahead, determined. 

“When I saw you kissing last night, it looked _right_ , in a way that she and I are not. I know that sounds creepy, but…” Kaladin waved dismissively at the rest of that excuse. “And...I realized it’s--Shallan and me-- it’s been taking too much of my attention from my duties. I can’t have that, and I should’ve known it the whole time, not to mention you two are already…” Kaladin gestured towards Adolin.

“So.”

Kaladin stopped short, turning to Adolin almost as a challenge. His dark eyes glared defiantly under that heavy brow, and Adolin could see his fists clenching from the corner of his eye. 

“The reason I’m telling you all this is if we’re going on this mission together, there has to be complete trust between us. And right now we both have good reasons not to trust each other, which could get one or both of us killed. So if there’s anything you need to say to me, brightlord, you’d better do it before we leave.”

This corridor was too quiet, and Kaladin was too close. It gave Adolin the feeling that Shallan’s spren would leap out any second to scold them against mating. 

Which was how Adolin Kholin finally accepted that he had a crush on Kaladin Stormblessed. 

But of course, it wasn’t a great time to bring that up. 

“I’ll keep you posted, Bridgeboy,” Adolin smiled, feeling suddenly very warm. “I promise. Now, as we both know, my cousin doesn’t like to be kept waiting." 

Adolin swept out an arm, gesturing in the correct direction. 

"Shall we?”


	55. A Broom and One Slipper

Kaladin

Kaladin found Renarin at the back of the group as Bridge Four headed to the Oathgate platform on the Shattered Plains. Rock insisted on carrying his cookpot along to make dinner, so after a bowl of stew and a ridiculous performance from Lopen and Huio - some story about a grandmother who defeated a Voidbringer with nothing but a broom and one slipper - the group trudged towards home full of food and in good spirits.

Renarin ignored Kaladin on approach, only addressing Kaladin once he’d been called by name. 

Storms, this was hard. Kaladin had barely rehearsed what he was going to say to Renarin, but the younger Kholin kept _staring_ at him all day, so it was obvious he knew or believed something. Better to clear things up now. 

Renarin looked scared, as if expecting retribution of some kind. He wouldn’t meet Kaladin’s eyes. 

“I ran into your brother a few days ago,” Kaladin started casually, “and--”

“He shouldn’t have done that,” Renarin spluttered. “He didn’t say exactly what happened but whatever it was, I’m sorry. Captain.”

The poor man seemed on the verge of tears. This was not how Kaladin was expecting this to go.

“What are you talking about?” Kaladin asked as soothingly as he could. “Shouldn’t have done what?”

“Punched you in the face!” Renarin whispered emphatically. “He said you were sparring, but Adolin’s a terrible liar, so, I don’t know what happened but...he shouldn’t have done that,” he repeated.

Renarin thought _Adolin_ was in the wrong? How had Adolin managed to reveal that he’d punched him, but no other part of the story? Storms, was Adolin trying to _protect_ him and Shallan? It seemed like a very un-lighteyes thing to do. But it was also, Kaladin realized, a very Adolin thing to do. 

“You’re acting like you’re the one that did it,” Kaladin tried a joke, which neither of them were really suited for, so nobody laughed, even politely.

“I’m fine, Renarin,” Kaladin reassured him, “you know what Stormlight can do, I healed up right away.”

“No you didn’t,” Syl argued in his ear. “You wore that black eye and broken nose for like two whole hours.”

“The reason I wanted to talk to you was the thing that _made_ your brother want to punch me,” Kaladin explained, looking ahead to the rest of the group.

Half of them were on the Oathgate platform, waiting for Kaladin and Syl to activate it. Sigzil was already scribbling away with a spanreed to make sure Malata was ready to go on the other side.

“Let’s talk more after we get back,” Kaladin suggested, stepping onto the platform. With a nod from Sigzil, he summoned Syl as a blade and brought them home in an instant.


	56. Make Arrangements

Shallan | Kaladin

Shallan read the note again:

_You are to accompany the captain to Thaylen City at the head of the next highstorm. Make arrangements with him to this effect._

Shallan’s heart leapt at the excuse to see Kaladin once more. Could this possibly be real? He couldn’t object to time together on a _work_ assignment, right? 

The note was signed by Jasnah and written in her unmistakable hand, but Shallan still asked Pattern to compare it against other samples, just in case. 

“The scripts match,” Pattern confirmed. “This assignment is real, Shallan, unless she plays a trick on you.”

“Who, Jasnah?” Shallan laughed out loud. “I don’t think she knows how.”

So why, then? Punishment? No, that didn’t make any sense either. 

_Think like Jasnah,_ Radiant prompted, startling Shallan a bit, as she hadn’t summoned Radiant in a while. There wasn’t really a _need_ to -- she hadn’t been alone with Adolin since their bender in Little Herdaz. There had been meetings, of course, always meetings, and Adolin remained perfectly warm and cordial at every single one, never faltering in his performance as a devoted betrothed brightlord. 

But he always had a reasonable excuse not to walk her home when they were together, usually to do with planning the mission to Kholinar. In the past week, there were no visits, no lessons, not a single storming kiss (which was infuriating). Palona noticed of course, offering the weak comforts of 'these things take time,' and 'you have your own life too, Shallan, don’t wait around for him'. But it was still frustrating, for multiple reasons. 

Kaladin was true to his word too, never acknowledging her presence when they were together or coming by the balcony after hours. Not that she knew of, anyway - she had begun spending the evenings at the Tipsy Cousin. Shallan was becoming something of an attraction there, with patrons asking her to sketch them like she had Jorr and Inzo. Apparently Laia was very impressed with the work, and was savvy enough to quietly advertise Shallan’s skill. It gave Shallan a way to pass the time besides drinking and staring at Laia (not that either of those were bad), and it taught Shallan that she could relate to strangers as herself, rather than a darkeyed avatar. 

But not all the time. For her part, Veil spent the week doing whatever she felt like - she was getting quite the taste for Questions, Peeks and Inferences, and as a result Shallan always had something to spend when she went to the bar. 

But with each passing day, the storming Kholinar mission loomed larger, promising to take both Adolin and Kaladin away for good. 

Not only that, but Shallan had recently realized that Adolin was at all these planning meetings _with Kaladin_. The idea that they were with each other while she was with neither of them struck Shallan as a deep injustice. Every time she considered that the two of them might be talking about her, to each other, it felt like ice in her veins. 

But what could she do about it? Tag along with them to Kholinar?

_Now that you mention it,_ Veil chimed in...

******

Kaladin entered the Bridge 4 barracks to the sounds of men groaning and tiles clicking.

“Thank you all very--” came a woman’s voice, not Lyn’s, as Kaladin rounded the corner to reveal Drehy, Lopen and Eth sitting with a darkeyed woman in a jacket and pants. 

“Oh finally, you’re here,” the woman scrambled to her feet as she pocketed her winnings, snatching a large hat from the ground. 

“I live here,” Kaladin replied acidly, for the second time in a week. “Is our common room a public tavern now, or…?” 

Kaladin looked sarcastically around the room. It wasn’t a good look for him, and he knew that, but what in Damnation was this woman doing here? 

“My mistress needs to speak to you, something about Thaylen City.” 

The woman struck a pose, arms crossed with her freehand impatiently tapping the opposite elbow.

“So can you go...do that? I don’t know, I’m not a messenger usually. She said you would know where to meet.”

At this, the not-usually-a-messenger shot a discomfiting look at Kaladin. There was something extremely familiar about her, something he couldn’t exactly place, but it felt like this person _knew_ something about him. Kaladin didn’t like it. 

“You’re not in Bridge 4,” Kaladin observed. “And yet you’re sitting around playing Questions in our barracks.”

Eth started to say something in response to this, but Drehy gave him a look as they gathered the tiles into a pouch. 

“Just passing the time, captain,” the woman retorted with a sullen shrug. Who _was_ she? 

“So can I tell my mistress you’ll come or what?” 

“And your mistress is…” Kaladin knew the answer - he'd been there when Dalinar gave the instructions to him and Jasnah for the trip to Thaylen City. But he still needed to hear her say it. 

“Brightness Davar.”

Kaladin’s chest tightened. He thought he had processed all the implications of taking Shallan with him on the next highstorm, convinced himself he was ready to approach it professionally after a little time apart. But now, the very thought of being with Shallan submerged all sense of professionalism below the surge of longing that welled to his throat.

“Oh yeah, I guess I should have said that part first,” the not-usually-a-messenger muttered as she jammed the silly-looking hat on her head. She hadn’t met Kaladin’s eyes again. 

Kaladin looked around self-consciously, understanding that he always had an audience in barracks. If he gave away his feelings now, chances were good that someone would catch it. 

Oh, right. 

He could just be rude.

“Storming lighteyes,” Kaladin grumbled, “think they can just summon—“ 

“You know, I was waiting here for a pretty long time, _captain,_ ” the woman interrupted, aiming the retort at her shoes. The broad brim of the hat covered all of her face but the tip of her nose.

“Kaladin, do we... _know_ her?” Syl whispered. Storms, there was something so familiar about this woman.

“She’s not wrong, gancho,” Lopen called over his shoulder. “We were playing long enough that I won a whole ruby and lost two. _Me_.”

“Aw, I’ve won more off you in less time, Lopen,” Eth teased. 

“But you lost more from her today, gancho,” Lopen observed, eliciting a laugh from the room. 

Amid the chatter that followed, the woman smiled to herself.

“Took you long enough,” she joked to no one in particular. 

Kaladin’s face grew hot with a flash of recognition. He’d seen this woman. For a split second midair in the dark on the balcony, when Shallan had... _changed._

He’d kissed this person.

_Shallan._

But it didn’t seem like her at all.

Storms, why was everyone watching them? How dare she put him in this position, and in front of his own men? And why was his heart racing around like an axehound whose master had finally come home? Kaladin desperately needed this interaction to be over.

“Fine!” Kaladin groaned, louder than he meant to. He glared at her, resulting in an infuriating smile. “Tell _her_ I’ll come.” 

_Not to the balcony, not to the balcony, you can’t trust yourself there, not to the balcony,_ the thought hummed in his brain. 

Where else though? Storms, he missed her so much. But she was _right there_ , wasn’t she? But it didn’t _feel_ like Shallan was there at all. 

“But,” Kaladin forced himself to add, “tell her to meet me in the map room.” 

“Why?” Shallan-but-not-Shallan looked up at him with the familiar irritation of Shallan when she wasn’t getting her way. 

“It’ll be more practical,” he explained, as coolly as he could. Storms, why was it always a game? Everything to do with Shallan meant pretending. 

“For planning purposes, she’ll understand,” Kaladin spoke as much like a condescending lighteyes as he could muster. “I’ll meet her there in an hour.” 

The woman straightened up, and the glare that came from under the brim of that hat was not at all Shallan-like.

“It was nice to see you, captain.” The smirk didn’t quite reach her eyes as she walked out.

An expectant silence filled the room as Shallan-but-not-Shallan turned the corner.

“Next time make her leave a note instead of betting away all your spheres,” Kaladin scolded the silence. “OK?”

Grumbled assents emerged from pockets of the room as he went to his quarters.


	57. We Know Her

Kaladin | Shallan

“We know her, right?” Syl said again, hovering beside Kaladin as he shrugged off his jacket and shoes.

“It was Shallan!” Kaladin muttered through his teeth, changing into clean shirt, socks and undergarments before pulling back on the same jacket and pants. “She was doing that...thing, where she changes her face. I can’t believe she would _do_ that, walk right in here like that!” 

“Are you sure that was her?” Syl zipped around Kaladin’s head a few times, stirring up his hair before letting it fall around his shoulders. She seemed to find this practice an important component of Kaladin’s grooming, for some reason.

“That first night, right before I, before we... _kissed,_ ” Kaladin whispered. “She looked like that, just for a second.” 

“Huh,” Syl mused as Kaladin carefully laced his boots. “It really didn’t seem like her at all.”

She disappeared under the bed, where he had stowed a different pair of boots that did not belong to him.

“So, are you finally gonna give these back?”

******

The map room was dark and boring, filled with the ghosts of endless meetings and strategy sessions. The added fact that she had to meet Kaladin here instead of the balcony made every mote in the air that much more oppressive to Shallan, as if Urithiru’s interior were a personal affront. 

Shallan sat impatiently on the table, her bottom squarely on the Steamwater Ocean north of Herdaz. She gazed with blurry focus in the direction of the door, turning Elhokar’s official order between her fingers in her safehand sleeve. 

It was a successful day so far - she was now officially on the Kholinar mission, had a legitimate excuse to see Kaladin, won an embarrassing amount of money off Bridge Four, and Veil had even gotten to talk with Kaladin for a minute (which she would never have admitted she’d been hoping for). Shallan was beginning to notice that Veil _really_ liked Kaladin, and had nearly talked herself into letting her alter ego conduct this entire encounter. 

Nearly. 

Instead it was Shallan who sat, both anxious and bored, intentionally ignoring the part of Roshar she was supposed to be reviewing. And it was also Shallan whose heart took off at a sprint when Kaladin came through the door. 


	58. Keep Each Other Safe

Adolin

Adolin cursed, wiping away the chouta sauce where it glopped onto the map of Kholinar. It gave him an odd, itchy feeling, looking at his own hometown with a military eye. So many things, so many places and people he loved were still in there, along with -- well, what? Nobody knew. 

He lay on his stomach, propped up on his elbows, muscles complaining from a long morning on the practice grounds. Stonestance was coming to Adolin more and more easily as he turned his full attention to it, and he had turned his _full_ attention to it. While it would never have been said that Adolin wasn’t skilled in this or any other form, he was finding a new appreciation for the way his natural strengths lent themselves to the stance. Where Windstance allowed for constant movement and displays of skill, Stonestance forced him to listen and watch, gathering the energy he was generally so ready to expend until _just_ the right moment. The practice made Adolin feel like he was meeting a new part of himself. An older, steadier part of himself. He liked it.

Biting off more chouta, Adolin turned his attention back to the map. Riding the highstorm, they would be coming at the city from the south, though Kaladin wasn’t confident in how precise a location they could pinpoint for a destination. It was still hard to believe that they would be moving so quickly, and so _high._

“Adolin?” Renarin’s quiet voice came from the doorway. 

“Hey, come on in,” Adolin called, abandoning the idea to jump up and greet his brother once his quads had their say in the matter. 

Renarin stepped into the room, assessing the possible places he might come to rest, eventually opting to sit cross-legged on the floor beside Adolin. He peered at the map, but without the frowny squint Adolin was used to from when his brother still wore glasses. It made him seem less...Renarin-like. 

“I’m a little jealous you get to see home,” he murmured, waving away the chouta when Adolin offered a bite. 

“I know it won’t be anything like we knew it,” Renarin continued hastily, as if expecting to be corrected, “but I still wish I could see it again.”

“We’ll get back there someday,” Adolin promised, with a certainty that surprised even himself.

Renarin didn’t respond to that. 

“Thanks for fixing Teft’s coat,” he said instead, smoothing down a corner of the map that was curling inward. 

“Yeah, of course,” Adolin responded, rolling on his side to look up at his brother. “It was way too big on him. That’s not just an aesthetic thing, it’s a safety—“

“I know that, Adolin,” Renarin interrupted. Storms, was that an eye roll? 

“But you could’ve just had someone else fix it. You didn’t have to do it yourself.”

_Turns out I’m desperate to impress your boss,_ Adolin thought to himself. 

“I was happy to do it,” he said instead. “And—I never apologized for barging in drunk the other night. I’m really sorry about that.”

The chouta was starting to feel ridiculous in his hand. 

“It’s OK,” Renarin muttered. “Kaladin told me why you did it.”

_He did?_

“He did?” Adolin asked, mildly suspicious. It wasn’t likely that bridgeboy would have lied, but Adolin knew well enough that there were plenty of ways to carve up the truth. 

“Yeah,” Renarin nodded. “Him and Shallan. I didn’t really want to know more than that.”

Adolin winced as he sat upright, dropping the chouta on the seat of a chair and licking the sauce off his fingers. 

“I can see why you would have done it,” Renarin said kindly, and it _hurt._

Was that what Renarin thought of him? That, within the context, his behavior towards Kaladin was in character?

Is that how everyone thought of him?

“Kaladin said he wasn’t angry about it,” Renarin reassured him. “And he said that it’s over with Shallan already too, so.”

Renarin picked up the map with both hands, holding it out to examine. 

“You’re going somewhere dangerous,” he said at the map. “More dangerous than we really understand, I think. Will you keep each other safe?”

“I will, Ren,” Adolin promised. “And--I don’t know if...it doesn’t matter, but I’ve apologized to Kaladin since then. That isn’t who I want to be.” 

_I want to be his boyfriend,_ he thought instead, a thought that came up more and more often. Given everything that had happened, the hypocrisy of the feeling was astounding, but it was also completely how Adolin felt. It helped him sympathize with Shallan a little, but it also made him panic whenever he was with her. Too many secrets. Too many. 

“Do you think our rooms are still the same?” Renarin wondered out loud, not noticing or not minding Adolin’s reverie. 

“What?” Adolin started. “Oh, yeah, I don’t know. Anything in there you’d want me to bring back?”

At this, Renarin laughed, shaking his head with such unexpected sadness that tears suddenly stung Adolin’s eyes. He stood abruptly, and Adolin forced himself to do the same. 

“Thanks, again. For fixing the coat.” Renarin said, turning to go.

“Don’t mention it,” Adolin replied, walking Renarin to the door. It was over a week before they would leave for Kholinar, but the eventuality of the mission felt suddenly oppressive.

Adolin knew better, so he didn’t trap his brother in the hug he very desperately wanted to give. Leaning against the door frame, he called, “I’ll see you around."

"Love you," Renarin replied.


	59. Southern Depths

Kaladin | Shallan

Despite his best efforts, Kaladin was not prepared to be alone with Shallan again. Seeing her there, legs dangling off the table, piercing blue eyes lighting up at the sight of him, he was seized by the desire to do a lot of things that he had agreed with himself never to do again. 

“Hi,” Shallan said, failing to hide her excitement. Storms, that _smile._

The weight of a satchel at Kaladin’s shoulder saved him from his impulses, and in one motion he lobbed it onto the table beside Shallan. 

“Kaladin, are you just gonna stand by the door all day?” Syl demanded. “It’s like you’re scared of her or something.”

“I’ve been meaning to give these back,” Kaladin explained as Shallan pulled the boots from the satchel. “I hope it hasn’t been too much of an inconvenience.”

“Oh please,” Shallan laughed, examining each shoe as if confirming that they were still in the same condition. Kaladin found himself offended by this for some reason.

“How long do you think someone can be betrothed to Adolin Kholin without acquiring more footwear? Not long at all, I promise.”

Storms, why bring up Adolin now? Was that an indication she had moved on? Wasn’t that good? Why did it make him want to break something?

Shallan scooted back onto the table, crossing her legs in front of her.

“Are you going to stay by the door the whole time?” she asked, cocking her head in a weirdly Syl-like way. “I feel like you’re about to run from the room at any second. Besides, Thaylen City is all the way over here—”

Shallan twisted at the waist, gesturing with her safehand to where Thaylenah was depicted behind her on the table. Storms, he missed holding her.

“So you definitely can’t see it from where you’re standing right now, because I’m blocking it.” 

She turned back to Kaladin with mock defiance. 

“That’s just science.”

Silence fell, and the anticipation that rose to fill it was physically painful. 

Then Kaladin remembered he was annoyed with her.

******

“I would appreciate it if you didn’t infiltrate my barracks again,” Kaladin crossed his arms, taking the long way around the table. “You took money off my men--”

“It wasn’t me!” Shallan spluttered. It _wasn’t_ her. “I mean - it--”

“I remember that disguise, Shallan! I saw you do it before.” Storms, it was not remotely fair that Kaladin looked so gorgeous when he was angry. In a crowded field, anger was definitely the most attractive emotion on him.

Wait. 

Panic rose in Shallan.

“You saw me do _what_ before?” _Damnation._

“What do you mean, what?” Kaladin shot back. “The disguise you wore into barracks today! Well, the face, you did it before...” he gestured weakly to the side, somehow effectively communicating _on the balcony._ Bringing up that time seemed to dissolve Kaladin’s irritation, and he stopped awkwardly next to the Southern Depths, a name which Shallan suddenly found to be mildly inappropriate. 

Shallan glared internally at Veil. Veil had been _sure_ he wouldn’t recognize her, it was so dark and so brief when she’d appeared on the balcony. _There’s no way he’ll remember, huh?_ Shallan thought at Veil, which made her feel very mentally sound. 

“It’s not... _me_ ,” Shallan exhaled, actively struggling against the impulses of her own southern depths. “I don’t know how to explain this exactly, but it’s not a disguise like you usually think of. She’s...her name is Veil. And she _really_ wants to meet you properly. Do you mind?”


	60. People Get Persistent

Kaladin | Veil

“OK,” Kaladin replied hesitantly, “sure, I can meet ‘Veil’.” 

“Kaladin,  _ what  _ is she talking about,” Syl whispered. “And  _ why  _ haven’t you kissed her yet?”

The sound of his invisible spren’s voice in his ear was a good reminder not to judge Shallan for whatever weird thing she was trying to explain. 

With a quick wave of Stormlight, Shallan transformed into the darkeyed woman he’d seen earlier, including the costume change.

‘Veil’ smiled broadly at him as she hopped off the table with freehand extended, incongruously adjusting a skirt he couldn’t see. As Veil, Shallan had a grace and ease of movement that Kaladin had never seen in her before. He might have tried recruiting this person to be a Windrunner, if she wasn’t already a Lightweaving. 

“It’s nice to meet you, Kaladin,” Veil grasped his hand firmly. “Sorry for leaving so many of your men with lighter pockets, but people get persistent when they’re coming from behind, you know? By the time you arrived, they would’ve just as soon called off dinner as call off the game.”

“Shallan?” Kaladin felt foolish for saying it, but it  _ really _ didn’t seem like her. He fought the urge to reach for her face, as if that would have cleared anything up.

“I’m Veil,” Shallan -  _ Veil _ \- corrected. “Shallan created me to handle some of her...responsibilities, and it’s still her body in here I guess” — Veil glanced down at herself for confirmation— “but I...we think differently, Shallan and I. Here,”

Veil hopped back up onto the table, legs swinging. She patted the place beside her where Thaylenah was depicted. 

“I’ll stand,” Kaladin responded warily. “So why did you show up on the balcony?”  _ And who was I kissing,  _ was a question he decided not to ask.

Veil rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to speak badly about Shallan to you, so I’ll just say she needed some encouragement to...take what she wanted. She was the one that bit you though, don’t worry. And everything after that. I haven’t been with you again since earlier today.”

Veil’s mouth twisted as she knocked her toes together. 

“Kind of missed you a little, actually,” she laughed, bashfully looking up at him. 

“Kaladin,  _ what. _ ” Syl remarked, unhelpfully echoing his own thoughts. 

Since it was clear Shallan considered Veil to be a separate person, Kaladin realized he needed to start speaking to her that way. But if Veil was separate, were her feelings for him separate, too?

“So...does Adolin know about you?” he asked. 

Veil barked a laugh in response.

“No! Adolin has...no,” she repeated, shaking her head. “He doesn’t know about me. Nobody’s supposed to know, really.”

Veil’s mouth formed a firm line as if in regret. It was so strange, this roughly Shallan-sized person appearing in her place, but seeming like someone altogether different.

“Anyway,” Veil spoke loudly, turning her attention to where Thaylenah was depicted on the table. Kaladin followed her gaze to the map, realizing he’d been staring at her. “You and Shallan are going there?”

******

Being so close to Kaladin had more of an effect on Veil than she cared to admit. She reminded herself continually that Kaladin probably wasn’t interested in her, maybe wasn’t even interested in Shallan anymore, and Veil’s eagerness to see Kaladin again had stupidly compromised her identity. This crush was making her sloppy, but it still felt very worth it. 

Veil’s position on the table meant that Kaladin had to approach her in order to approach the map, which she congratulated herself on as he took a few steps closer.

“We’ll travel by Oathgate to the Shattered Plains about an hour before the storm hits -- should I be talking to Shallan right now?” Kaladin hesitated. “Or will you - will she…”

“It’s sort of the same,” Veil responded truthfully. “Everything is technically already in Shallan’s head, so this conversation will be too.” Veil paused. The troubled look that crossed Kaladin’s face was a bad sign. 

“I hope -- don’t think badly about her because of this, OK? You know, maybe it would be better if I just--” Veil waved a hand across her face to signify changing back. 

“No! No, sorry,” Kaladin interrupted, crossing his arms. “I’m just trying to...understand how it works. That’s all. I don’t think badly about Shallan. Or...you.”

Veil trained her focus on the map as she felt Kaladin’s eyes on her, her heart beating so loud she was sure he could hear it.

“Technically I was the one you kissed first,” she muttered. “Shallan started hyperventilating up there and she needed some help. So it was me who did the Stormlight thing first too, technically.” It felt good to take credit for that. Veil didn’t realize how much she’d wanted to.

“I guess that wasn’t really fair to do, though, make you kiss someone you didn’t realize you were kissing,” Veil followed up hastily, speaking to her shoes. Storms, she could face down the Ghostbloods but not Kaladin Stormblessed? This was a considerable weakness. Good to know. 

“Anyway, sorry about that,” Veil muttered. “I’ve never done it again and I never would.”  _ Unless you wanted to _ , she thought with her whole body. 

Veil forced herself to meet Kaladin’s gaze. He was frowning, but it was more like one of his confused frowns than one of the angry ones.

Three breaths passed. It felt like an hour.

“So, who’s going to Thaylen City with me?” Kaladin changed subjects. “You? Or Shallan?” 

“Shallan got the assignment from Jasnah, so it should be her that goes,” Veil responded, not mentioning that she herself had no interest in that mode of travel. “Which, yeah, I guess it makes sense for her to do this part of the meeting, after all. So that’s goodbye for me.”

Veil hopped off the table and stuck her hand out, relishing the contact too much when Kaladin took it. 

“I would really appreciate it if you kept this - well,  _ me _ \- between us, captain,” Veil lifted her chin and chest slightly in an effort to communicate professionalism. “I’m glad we got to meet.”

“Me too.” Kaladin was still frowning in the confused way. “And I will. You have my word.”


	61. The Irrational Feeling

Shallan | Kaladin

After practicing in front of Elhokar, it felt less strange to change faces in front of Kaladin. Shallan was a little sad for Veil, whose feelings for Kaladin were stronger than any of them had realized, but it was also unspeakably wonderful to be back in the same room with her hand in his. 

Kaladin also seemed relieved to see Shallan as Shallan again, which gave her the courage to take one step forward and kiss him on the mouth, squeezing his hand tight in the space between their hearts. 

Every one of Shallan’s senses thrilled at the experience, drinking in his sharp intake of breath, the pressure of his lips, the just-in-from-outside fragrance and flavor of his being. Her eyes were closed, so not _every_ sense, then. But still. 

The thrill abruptly subsided when Shallan realized, though Kaladin was still holding tight to her hand, he wasn’t kissing back.

“Sorry,” Shallan pulled away, withdrawing her hand in disappointment and embarrassment. “I’m sorr--”

“It’s OK, I just...storms, I missed you,” Kaladin murmured, angling himself away from her, towards the room’s blank back wall. 

“So, are you better at your job now?” Shallan asked, more bitterly than she would have liked.

“Yes,” Kaladin replied, more quickly than she would have liked.

“Well, I’m around more often at least,” he qualified, “but Bridge Four has made it very clear they suspect something’s been going on with me and _someone_ , so now they’re suspicious because I’m _not_ going out at night. I--”

Kaladin sighed, backing up to the table and placing both hands down behind him. 

“Are you and Adolin…?”

Shallan felt herself blush hard. Had Adolin seriously never mentioned anything to him? 

“Well, he didn’t call off the betrothal,” Shallan said, “but he’s also been avoiding me all week, so…”

Kaladin grunted thoughtfully, looking surprised by that answer. It suddenly occurred to Shallan that Adolin’s behavior these past few days was not a great way to treat someone. But then, she hadn’t treated him very well either, so…

“Yeah,” Shallan shrugged. “I don’t know. He has a right to feel however he feels about it.” Shallan didn’t particularly agree with that sentiment, but she knew it made her seem mature. 

“Next highstorm’s in a few days, I think,” Kaladin shifted topics, gaze falling on the painted depiction of Thaylenah beside him. “Besides dressing for the outdoors I don’t really think you have to prepare for much. Before the storm approaches we can meet on the Oathgate platform and head to the Shattered Plains together.”

“OK,” Shallan nodded. The room felt suddenly oppressive, like being back home again. 

“That’s really it,” Kaladin said, taking his weight back from the table. “I guess I’ll see you then.”

Kaladin made a brief face of irritation before nodding to Shallan. 

“I’m glad to meet Veil,” he said solemnly. “And I won’t tell anyone.”

“Thanks for my boots,” Shallan laughed weakly. 

“You’re welcome,” Kaladin nodded, hand already on the door. 

As he exited, Shallan felt an important piece of paper between her fingers. A shout rose in her throat to call him back, tell him she was coming to Kholinar, even though she suddenly dreaded seeing his reaction.

But before it could turn into words, he was gone.

******

“I’m really proud of her,” Syl said as Kaladin walked briskly towards barracks.

“What? Why?” Kaladin demanded, slightly out of breath. His heart was racing, and he had the irrational feeling of being chased. 

“Because she kissed you first, of course,” Syl gloated, sailing along on her back as if supported by an invisible sofa. “It’s starting to get old, you ignoring me when I tell you to kiss her.”

“What’s starting to get old is you _telling_ me that,” Kaladin grumbled.

“I’ll drop it,” Syl promised, holding her hands up innocently. “Not because you don’t want to kiss her anymore, because you obviously _do_ , but because you don’t need anything else to be grumpy about.”

Syl swirled into a windspren, lapping Kaladin around the shoulders before keeping pace beside him again as a young woman. 

“She looks really cute as that Veil person,” she mused. “A little dangerous too, like--”

“ _Syl_.”

“Fine! Never mind.”

As the distance between him and the map room grew, Kaladin finally felt able to take a deep breath, his pulse and gait returning to normal. 

“I’m proud of you too, Kaladin,” Syl said softly as they walked once more through Bridge Four’s barracks. She was clearly waiting for him to ask how come, so Kaladin took the bait.

“Why’s that.”

“Because,” she explained, “you admitted that you miss her.”

The scattered hemispheres of Adolin’s handiwork caught Kaladin’s eye as he dropped onto the bed, suddenly exhausted. He reached out absentmindedly to turn one in his fingers. 

“I do,” Kaladin sighed, and a thing in his heart unclenched, though he couldn't yet tell what was held in its grasp.

“I miss her a lot.”


End file.
